


His Last Vow (alternative)

by 221b_hound



Series: The Pure and Simple Truth [4]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Blood and Injury, Canon Divergence - His Last Vow, Episode Fix-It: s03e03 His Last Vow, Episode: s03e03 His Last Vow, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-14
Updated: 2017-03-07
Packaged: 2018-09-24 09:00:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 27,033
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9714446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/221b_hound/pseuds/221b_hound
Summary: Sherlock wakes from a dark dreams; and though he loves his friends he refuses to need them. What he needs is a case. Charles Augustus Magnussen should do nicely.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Tags will be changed and added to as the story progresses, to avoid spoilers. Check them as each chapter goes up for this story and the whole series.

_In the dream, he crawls, on hand-and-foot, through the moving shadows. A bloodhound. A tiger. A wolf. An apex predator, seeking prey. Teeth bared, thoughts a bright blue ribbon of light in the dark, he hunts._

_But his prey is a predator too, and he is also the hunted._

_Stalking becomes combat; violence becomes pain; victory comes at a cost. Every time._

_In the dream, even when violence is victory, fighting becomes fleeing. And he runs and runs and runs, though every path he chooses leads down to darker deeps, all black brambles and sharp stones and falling falling (rush of wind)._

_In the dream, when he’s not running, he’s hiding._

_When he’s not hiding, he’s dying._

_“You can’t,” says a robot voice, deep and warm and cruel and insistent. “What would John say?”_

_And he’s falling, falling, falling (rush of wind in his hair, rush of wind through his hollow ribs, rush of wind in his lungs)._

_“Breathe,” says the robot voice he trusts to lead him from the down deep dark; the voice that keeps him safe even though it can’t keep him unharmed. This voice that promises that the ones he left behind are protected, are safe._

_Breathing isn’t boring any more. It’s harder than running. It’s harder than hiding._

_In the dream, Mary is there, her wedding dressed soaked in his blood. “You have to come back. John’s expecting you home. If you die again, it’ll kill him.”_

_Her lips don’t move when he hears the other voice again. **You will not die while John Watson is expecting you home.**_

_“I miss you,” he says, blood in his mouth, to Mary’s worried face/the electronic voice._

_In the dream, Mary cradles his head in her lap and strokes his hair._

_“I’ve got you. You’re not leaving me now.”_

_(Rush of wind through his ribs and the thud-thud-thud of his unprotected heart. He is so afraid to die.)_

_“I’ll bring you home.” Mary’s eyes say it but her mouth doesn’t move when the voice speaks. “I promised you. I promised **him**. I’ll bring you home.”_

_(Rush of wind still, oh still, and it chills his unprotected heart.)_

_In the dream, her hands close over his hollow ribs, cupped over bone, over the rush of wind._

_In the dream, John’s hands close over his hollow ribs, beside hers._

_In the dream, other hands close over his hollow ribs which are no longer hollow. No rush of wind. Still and warm._

_Thud-thud-thud, protected in this chamber. John’s hands. Mary’s hands. Those other hands. The one he never saw, never met, never knew, except as much knowing as a year can bring, holding onto the lifeline thrown down a  deep, dark well, waiting to be allowed into the light again._

_The voice that crawled and hunted and fought and ran and hid and fell with him, and wouldn’t let him die._

_“That’s it, sunshine,” they say, “That’s it. You’re coming home.”_

*

Sherlock’s eyes flew open, his breath fast and shallow. It took a too-long second to recognise his own room.

He lay on his uncomfortably damp and scrunched-up sheets, perspiration cooling on his goosebumped skin. His room was in shadow. Beyond the window he could hear London.

Within his room he could hear his heart. _Thud-thud-thud._

It was, as his dreams went since his return, a good dream. A coming home dream. But something in it nagged at him. Something in it was out of place.

He dragged his hands over his face, then up again, scrubbing fingers through his tangled curls. He tugged on them, the sharp pain of it forcing him to the now and away from cobweb-nightmares.

Sherlock lumbered to the shower, feeling stupid-clumsy with exhaustion and unwarranted adrenalin. He washed his hair, the scent of it grounding him (home, **home** , no such luxuries while undercover for a year.)

Afterwards he sat in his pyjamas and robe in John’s old chair and watched the light slowly rise and glow through the curtains.

Prescient John had said to call him when and if the nightmares came, and stayed. “You can call. You can talk to me. I know a bit about this, Sherlock. It helps to talk.”

But John was married and for the last few weeks, once returned from the honeymoon, had been making steps for a nursery. (Prematurely. The first trimester was the trickiest time. Early days. But. But still. Mary had texted him colour samples for the walls. He knew periwinkle was John’s choice; the thistle Mary’s. He’d texted back a sample of a medium turquoise, bordering on sage, refusing flatly to be the arbiter. Three days later, Mary texted back a video of John painting the baby’s room medium turquoise. Maybe they meant to make him participate all along. Sneaky.)

Sherlock drew up his knees, wrapped his arms around his shins and watched the dust motes floating in the light.

He would not call John. He would not call Mary. Not Molly. She had given enough of herself for his cause and he found he wanted to be kind when he could. Not Greg. Good god, not Mycroft. That would invite lectures without end.

_I am myself. I will manage. I will lock it away. I’ve done it for years. This will pass. It will pass. This, too, shall pass._

What he needed was a case. Something meaty. Something with a bit of heart and blood and bone in it to get his teeth into.

To be exact, he needed the case that Lady Smallwood had brought to him last night.

Charles Augustus Magnussen.  Now _there_ was a predator worth pursuing. 

Sherlock unfolded from the chair. He threw open the curtains to let in the light.

_I don’t need Jiminy Cricket in my ear to scotch **this** serpent. I miss Agra. Perhaps I even love Agra. But I don’t **need** Agra. I don’t **need** anybody._

Time to wake up and get moving. The game was _on._

*

“Don’t be so impatient,” Agra had said to him once. Sherlock had plucked the earpiece out and held it in his fist for five minutes, irritated at being lectured by a disembodied voice. Not even a _human_ voice. He counted the seconds and at five minutes plus one second, he put the device back in.

“You gave me just enough time to make a cup of tea with that sulk,” Agra’s altered voice said, “Ta.”

“I’m not impatient. The window of opportunity is narrow.”

“I know that. Professional here, remember?”

“But not a field operative.”

“No. But I’ve brought my operatives home.”

“All of them?”

Too long a beat.

“Sherlock, I will get you through this and bring you home. I promise you.”

“You can’t make promises from where you sit back there in London, or wherever you lurk.”

“Lurk. I like that. I’m _lurking_. Look, I know a 100% record would make you feel more confident, but every one of my people came back bar one. And I didn’t lose him because of bad luck or bad planning.”

“What then?”

Silence.

“Ah. You’d tell me but then you’d have to kill me?”

“That was probably a funny joke the first three times it was told, back in 1895. I expect better of a Holmes.”

“I apologise. I’m distracted by the imperative to break into this apartment and find this damned strongbox while you’re wittering in my ear.”

“Then get your burgling hat on, sunshine. We’re clocking the babysitter taking the brat out for a walk in three, two, one and _go_.”

Radio silence for the break in, the search, the extraction of the papers, until, “Here they come,” in his earpiece. He scrambled out a third storey window and down a trellis, nimble as a squirrel.

“See what happens when you listen to your handler?” Agra said, the low laugh clear through the electronic distortion, “Everything comes up roses.”

“Are you always this insufferably chirpy?”

“Yes. It’s remarked on regularly in my performance reviews.”

“What an appalling life you lead.”

“Pity me.”

“Hardly. You’ve got tea.”

“Earl Grey and everything. Hey. I thought you’d like to know. Our eyes spotted Watson at Postman’s Park the other day. With a woman. They’ve been for drinks since then. We’ve run a check on her. She’s clear.”

“How… is he?”

“Not great. The boss still won’t let me pass the message on that you’re alive. But better than he has been.”

“Good.”

Sherlock boarded a tram, switched twice then walked across an overgrown park to reach the safehouse.

He sat and stared at the papers he’d retrieved, but he had trouble concentrating. He rose and paced. He lifted his hands to an imaginary violin and played on nothing but a memory, feeling the wood under his chin, the bow in his right hand, strings under the left.

“Sherlock.”

“Agra.”

“This too shall pass, Sherlock. I promise.”

“You make a lot of promises for a disembodied voice.”

“I know. But have I ever let you down?”

Sherlock didn’t want to answer, but in this abandoned house, lonely and far from home, he said to the voice that had not abandoned him: “No. You never have.”

*


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everyone seems to be angry with Sherlock - well, being found by John in a drug den does tend to put everyone in a mood, including Molly - but Sherlock has struggles of his own.

To say that John was unhappy when he found Sherlock in the same drug den as young Isaac Whitney was an understatement. Sherlock had meant to keep very, very quiet, like a mouse, when he recognised John’s voice, but it made him feel so warm and comfortable – Dr Watson sounding firm and soothing and commanding and kind all at once – that he forgot to be alarmed and on his guard.

Also, he was high as a kite.

Sherlock realised his error – and that he had been saying _sssshhhhh, like a mouse_ under his breath – when a man crouched down beside him. (John. Unmistakable scents: hints of his favourite tea, faint tinge of sour sweat – John had woken from a nightmare and came straight out without showering, but also the hint of adrenalin. Had probably needed to rough someone up a bit to get into the building. What was that whining noise? Ah, that skinny rat-faced fellow who got the good stuff and then patrolled the halls.)

“Yes, fine, I didn’t have time to shower, and he’s whining because I sprained his wrist, just a little,” John was saying, “Now get off that filthy mattress before I haul you up by the scruff of your neck and drag you out of here.”

_Oh. Said that all out loud. Fuck._

“Yes, and you still are. Come on. Can you walk?”

“Course I can walk.”

Sherlock managed to walk perfectly well behind John on the way out. As long as he concentrated.

_And Mary had come for the ride. Oh just brilliant. Fucking perfect._

“Still out loud, Sherlock,” John told him.

John hadn’t looked at him since they’d left the squalid room behind. Sherlock knew John and his moods like a particularly well read and well-loved book, and on these pages were the lines _I am too angry and hurt to look at you, and too worried to leave you behind; why do you do this to yourself, to us?_

“It’s for a case,” Sherlock said as they reached the car. Isaac was in the back seat already. Rat-faced man was still whining about his wrist.

“A case,” John spat, rounding on him. “A _case_. Sherlock, I’ve been calling you for weeks. Mary has too. No answer, calls, texts, nothing. Mrs Hudson said you were on an important case, hardly home. I know you weren’t home because I came by, several times, and you weren’t there.”

“Yes. I’m on a _case_.” John wasn’t normally this slow.

“Sherlock, you’re off your face in a crack den. That is not a case. That’s… that’s…”

Then John’s face did that endlessly interesting thing. Cascades of response. The anger, the hurt, the fear. “You could have come to me. If it was this bad.”

“No, John…”

“I know… I know what it’s like.” John’s voice dropped low, just for Sherlock to hear. “Coming back. I thought you knew you could come to me. If you were having… problems. Nightmares.” The anger dissipated, fragmenting away. “I’m sorry. That you didn’t. Didn’t feel you could.”

Sherlock swayed and John seized him by the elbows, and their heads were so close, Sherlock could have brushed his lips against John’s temple.

He didn’t.

For a moment Sherlock didn’t speak either. His inner monologue was being persistently outer, and he wasn’t ready yet to ask the questions he wanted to ask. To make the suspicions he had into sounds. He wasn’t sure yet. He didn’t understand yet.

The thoughts bubbled at the back of his throat, though, so he said something else.

“I’m sorry,” Sherlock breathed, “But it really is for a case. I can explain.”

“All right.” John sounded resigned more than convinced, but he opened the car door. “We’d better get to the hospital first.” Sherlock sat in the back seat with ill grace borne of feeling annoyed and guilty and annoyed at being made to feel guilty. The skinny guy holding his wrist gingerly and complaining about it being broken was ushered in beside him.

“Ooooooooow.”

“It’s only sprained,” John told the rat-faced man again, “I know how to sprain people.

“He does,” Sherlock assured him, “I’ve seen him do it. Very professional.”

Mary, Sherlock noticed, smirked a bit at that, but she looked exasperated enough when John got into the passenger seat beside her.

“Bart’s is closest,” John said, “And Molly might…do us a favour.”

“That woman’s too good for you two,” Mary said sternly.

“Yeah, I know she’s good to us.” John was gazing at his hands. The left, Sherlock saw, was trembling.

“ _For_ you, I said.” But her eyes darted down to John’s hand.

Sherlock closed his eyes and considered that this going-it-alone lark might even be less easy on his friends than bothering them with his problems might have been.

Oh well. Too late now.

*

At Bart’s, Molly saw to the rat-faced drug dealer – named Billy, apparently, to nobody’s especial interest – and examined Isaac briefly before turning her frown on Sherlock.

“Sherlock, are you all right?”

“Fine. Peachy. Just great.”

Her frown became more severe and she clenched her hands. “Do I need to take a sample?”

“Nope,” said Sherlock, popping the P, “I am off my tits. It’s for a c-“

She slapped him hard before he even finished. “How dare you,” she snapped, raising her hand to strike him again, “After everything we did to save you! Everything you put us through!”

A hand closed hard around her wrist. “What the hell are you doing?” Mary gripped Molly’s wrist tight.

Molly flinched, gasped, pulled away, shame and fury and anguish all there as she flushed bright red. “I can’t do this any more, Sherlock. I can’t.”

“Do what?”

“This.  Why do you pull everyone who cares about you to shreds?”

Sherlock lashed back, in words. Always in words. “Don’t get my motivations tangled up in your limited expectations of what you think I am. You caring about me doesn’t oblige me to pander to them.”

Sherlock knew he was being an ass, being cruel, at the same time as he pushed at her, at all of them. It was too much. All of this was too much. Nightmares and fear and guilt and love and uncertainty, his own, theirs. Too much.

_I am myself. I am myself still.  Oh god, I need to breathe._

And suddenly John was there, one hand on his back to steady him, one on Sherlock’s wrist to measure his pulse. “Okay, Sherlock. Okay. Breathe. You can breathe. Come on.”

More failure of the inner monologue.

_This was not how being high used to go. This was not how it was supposed to be._

“I know, Sherlock. Just… try panting for me. Hard, like you’ve been running. That’s it. Keeping doing it.”

Sherlock panted hard, fast, shallow, the action following the panic in his chest, until he had suddenly to take a huge breath. And then he was exhaling, slow, not calm, but coming down.

He looked at John. Only at John.

“When I have a case, I don’t usually sleep much. I like that… I don’t have to sleep.”

John nodded. “All right. I know.”

“You don’t. I’ve started this case now. I can’t stop. Everything’s in place. If I stop now, it’s ruin.”

“All right then.” John was still his soothing Doctor Watson-ish best. “Tell me what you need me to do.”

Sherlock would much rather John was well out of it, but that wasn’t going to happen now. Across the lab, he saw Mary with Molly. Molly was crying. Mary was trying to comfort her and Molly wouldn’t be comforted. It hurt to see that. To see Molly rejecting the care and understanding offered for her sudden but not quite incomprehensible act of violence.

“Molly, I’m sorry,” he said. Sorry was getting easier with practice, Sherlock noted as though from a distance. It wasn’t right that he had to say it so often, to get better at it.

Molly’s whole demeanour was written in misery and shame and still a little anger. “Don’t apologise. Just… don’t do this to yourself. Please.”

 _I don’t just do this to myself. I do it to you. To John. To Mary and Mycroft._ Sherlock wasn’t sure if he’d never realised it before, or had just never cared enough about it before.

“But I have to apologise,” he said, “I’ve asked too much. Given too little. You deserve better, especially from me. I am sorry, Molly.”

She was calmer now. She sniffed and rubbed her shoulder against her damp cheek. “I am too. I’m sorry…” her fingers hovered near his reddened cheek, then brushed a light kiss over the spot. “I’m so sorry, Sherlock.” She stood back from him, very deliberately giving him space. “Now go home and let John look after you, all right?”

“Yes, Doctor.” The faintest of smiles.

“God forbid I have that job full time,” Molly said, puffing a nervous laugh.

“Lucky me, though, yeah?” John smiled half as though he meant it and half as though it’d be the death of him.

“I’ll take Isaac home,” Mary said, “Then I have to do some shopping. See you at home for tea?”

“See you then, love.”

Mary stood on tiptoe to kiss Sherlock’s cheek and murmur in his ear. “Let him take care of you, won’t you? It’ll make him feel better. And you too.”

Sherlock would have liked to think so, but he suspected that what was waiting for them at Baker Street wouldn’t help matters much.

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a reminder that for dialogue and other details, I'm using the transcripts completed by the lovely [Ariane DeVere.](http://arianedevere.livejournal.com/)


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Neither John nor Sherlock is happy with who they find back at Baker Street. But there are worse things - there is who they find at Magnussen's penthouse, and the bloody consequences of that discovery.

Sherlock told John about Charles Augustus Magnussen in the cab on the way home.

“That bloke up in front of the parliamentary inquiry?”

“Oh. You’ve heard of him.”

“Only what I read in the paper.”

“Yes, well, seeing as he owns a large number of them, don’t imagine you’ve read a fraction of it, and that fraction’s probably whitewashed.”

Sherlock’s phone pinged. He looked at the screen and looked very pleased with himself. “And it looks like there’s every chance my relapse into drug use will hit the papers. Exactly the foot in the door I need.”

The cab pulled up and Sherlock shot out, leaving John to pay, which he grudgingly did.

“My brother’s here,” Sherlock grumbled, placing the knocker at its habitual angle to the left.  “What does he want?”

John stomped up the stairs at Sherlock’s heels. “You have heard of acting, haven’t you? Pretending to be a drug user. You pretended to be dead for a whole year once, fake coke habits shouldn’t be so hard.”

“Much harder,” Sherlock said as they reached the door, “Especially if you need corroborating witnesses. A convincing witness really has to _believe_ to be of use…” He paused before pushing open the door and looked sideways at John. “Ah. That. Wasn’t what I meant to say.”

“Yeah, there’s a lot of that today.”

“John.”

“We’ll discuss your idiot decisions to method act your drug problem later.”

“Yes, by all means,” came a sardonic voice from beyond the door, “Do come inside to discuss your idiot decisions, little brother. We have so many to choose from.”

Sherlock pushed the door open and sailed into his living room for all the world like he didn’t look like he’d be sleeping rough for a fortnight.

Mycroft, sitting in Sherlock’s chair, arched an eyebrow at Sherlock. The skin around his eyes tightened slightly. “On the sauce again, are we? What set you off this time? Boredom? A sulk? An unhappy love affair?”

“John called you,” said Sherlock with a dark look at both of them.

“No. I didn’t.”

“No. This is simply a happy coincidence.” Mycroft rose and looked around the flat as though expecting to contract cholera from it at any moment. “Though while I’m here, I can call a team to look. Former sergeant Anderson has become quite a fan, I hear. I’m sure he’ll be discreet.”

“There’s nothing to find.” Sherlock threw himself into a curled up ball in his chair, reclaiming it in no uncertain manner from Mycroft’s occupation of it.

“Your bedroom door is shut,” said Mycroft, “You haven’t been home all night. Why would a man who has never closed a door, except when he was hiding things behind it, do so this one time?”

“I’m hiding John’s birthday present.”

“It’s not my birthday.” Sherlock glared at him, and John laughed. Sherlock flashed a smile back. A shared joke then.”

“Unbirthday present,” suggested Sherlock, then he saw Mycroft reaching for the handle of the bedroom door and leapt up again. “Just stop! Point made!”

Mycroft turned slowly. “Is it really?”

“It’s not what you think. It’s… for a case.”

“Oh. Our parents will be so relieved not to have cut short yet another holiday on account of your substance abuse.”

Sherlock’s fists clenched and he swallowed hard. “Just leave, Mycroft. It’s under control.”

“Your drug use or the case you’re pursuing.”

“Both.”

“Because I am here to warn you, Sherlock. Leave it. Drop. The case.”

Sherlock shook his head minutely. “You don’t know…”

“I know Lady Smallwood was here a month ago. I know what you’re doing.”

“You don’t know anything.”

“Magnuss-“

Before he could finish, Sherlock had launched himself at his brother, seizing him, twisting his arm, shoving him up against the door until Mycroft was gasping with shock and sudden pain.

“Sherlock!” John protested.

“I won’t leave it,” Sherlock whispered harsh into his brother’s ear, over Mycroft’s hiss of distress.

“There are national se…”

Sherlock twisted Mycroft’s wrist harder, ignoring John’s hand on his shoulder, trying to make him stop.

“You think you’re safe from him,” Sherlock’s voice was low, barely audible, “You think you can use him for your own ends. You can’t. He’s a venomous thing and he will find some way to use you first if he can.”

“Y-you don’t know what you’re dealing with,” insisted Mycroft , pale and perspiring now with unrelenting pressure on his wrist. “I must insist you drop…”

“Or what? An east wind will come for me? Perhaps the ghost of Eurus is coming for _you_ this time, brother mine.”

Mycroft managed to grow even paler.

“Be grateful,” Sherlock continued, “That Uncle Rudy left all his vintage lingerie to the Victoria and Albert after all. It pissed you off I know, but what an opportunity for blackmail it would have been.”

He released Mycroft at last and stalked away, leaving John to see the man out.

“Just go,” said John, “I’ll keep an eye on him.”

“The edict goes for you too,” said Mycroft, recovering, “Magnussen is under my protection.”

Sherlock stalked back, pushed Mycroft into the hall and slammed the door in his face.

Then Sherlock glanced through the kitchen towards his closed bedroom door.

“With luck she hasn’t heard,” he muttered. He turned to John. “Speak of this to no-one. I don’ t know who has ears. I need to wash up.” Another glance to the bedroom door.

“This is your case then? And Mycroft doesn’t want you to do it?”

“Of course he doesn’t. It’s big and it’s dangerous. No sane individual would have anything to do with it.”

“I do enjoy our pep talks.”

“You’re in, then?”

“Of course I’m in.”

“Good. I’m meeting him in three hours. I’ll fill you in on the details later. Take a seat. And don’t go in my bedroom.”

As the bathroom door shut, John glanced at his old chair, still at its old stand, like he might came back to Baker Street any minute. That made him feel… sad. He cleared his throat. Looked at Sherlock’s closed bedroom door. Began to walk towards it.

It opened, and out walked Janine Flynn. In only a shirt.

Not her own shirt.

*

Fifteen minutes later she was gone.

She’d been chirpy, she’d been relaxed and at home, she’d gone to flirt with Sherlock while he was in the shower. Then she got dressed while Sherlock finished showering.

John tried to talk about the case when Sherlock was back in the living room. Sherlock hissed ‘sssshhh’ at him and John dropped it.

Janine had flitted back into the living room. ‘Sherl’ apologised for not coming back last night because of a sudden twist in a case. Janine then cheerfully asked after Mary, suggested the four of them have dinner, as a way of revealing to her nearest and dearest that she and Sherlock were. You know. Seeing each other.

More idle, teasing banter, then Janine and Sherlock snogged sensuously at the door. And she was gone.

Sherlock had been trying to talk to John about the case for several minutes now, but John was still stuck.

“You have a girlfriend?”

“Yes, John. As you see.”

“Janine is your girlfriend?”

“Yes, well, that’s hardly a strenuous observation. John, I’m trying to explain the case…” He went on for a bit longer, about Napoleon and apples.

“Dinner.”

“What?”

“Me and Mary coming for dinner. With wine. And. Sitting.”

“Seriously? I’ve just told you the western world is run from this house and you want to talk about dinner?”

John did not want to talk about dinner. He wanted to talk about the fact that Sherlock was… gayish. He did not do the sex. He wanted to talk about the fact that Sherlock loved him, but he was sleeping with Janine Flynn. He wanted to talk about the fact that Sherlock Holmes Doesn’t Do The Sex, but he was sleeping with Janine Flynn. He wanted to know how romance was not Sherlock Holmes’s area, and how they both loved each other but it didn’t have to be like that, they could be who and what they were, whatever that was, and it was enough. Sherlock didn’t want that kind of love from John and that was all right. Who they were was… enough. It was.

But Sherlock Holmes was sleeping with Janine Flynn.

And yes, yes, of course yes, John had no right to comment. No right to say. No. No rights. To. He was married to Mary. But. But. They’d said. Mary knew. About them. Mary. Said she. Loved.

His thinking stuttered to a standstill over everything but the one fact that was hurting him with confusion and rejection.

Sherlock Holmes, who did not do sex and romance, had a girlfriend and was sleeping with her.

“John?”

“No. Fine. Yes. Tell me about this. House. This. Appletree?”

“Appledore.”

Sherlock told him about Appledore.

And then Charles Augustus Magnussen came to visit.

Magnussen found everything about Sherlock and John amusing, from their indignation to their powerlessness as Sherlock tried to offer himself as an intermediary and Magnussen just didn’t care.

He gazed at Sherlock intently for a while, and said, apropos of nothing, “Redbeard.”

Sherlock, speaking at the time, stumbled to silence. John flashed him a look, only to find Magnussen fixing him with the same smirking twist of the lips. “How is your sister? Still a little… firebrand?”

Sherlock began speaking again, but Magnussen sauntered to the fireplace.

“I like Lady Smallwood. English but with a spine. You are all so polite, usually. A nation of herbivores.” Then he pissed in the hearth like a very refined kind of dog, sneered as he presented the corner of a bundle of papers and left.

John marched to the sink to find the bleach, then abandoned that in favour of a small can of lighter fluid. He sprinkled it liberally in the cold hearth and set it on fire to burn the stench and the humiliation to cinders.

“What, John, no, we don’t have time for that! Magnussen’s shown his hand. He has the letters. He’s prepared to negotiate, now he’s confidant I’m an addict and no material threat to him.  He’ll stop by the office to put the letters in his safe then leave for a lunch meeting.”

“How do you know he’s got a lunch meeting?”

“I know his schedule.”

"How?"

“Because I do. Hang on, I have to get something…” Sherlock rummaged in his drawer and put a box in his pocket – John couldn’t see exactly what it was, or he could and he refused to believe it. “Coming?”

John wanted answers. Not all of them about Magnussen. Of course he was coming.

*

Magnussen lived on the top floor of CAM Global News, above his office and shielded with fourteen layers of security. A private lift from the glass and steel lobby took Magnussen and a very few others with the right access pass up to the glittering heights.

Or, if you were Sherlock, you nicked a lesser pass, disabled it and tried it on the lift to let Magnussen’s PA check that it wasn’t the boss back early from his lunch date with a corrupted keypass.

“Why should his PA let us up?” John asked as Sherlock swiped the card and set off the corrupted card alert in Magnussen’s office.

“She’s my girlfriend,” said Sherlock, with a quick, sharp smile.

“She’s your…?”

“This is taking longer than I…” Then the screen flashed on and Sherlock put on his sweetest smile for Janine, who looked thrilled by the surprise of seeing him.

“Sherlock, you complete loon! What are you doing?”

“I’ve come to see you!”

“I can’t come down.”

“Let me in. Go on.” He crinkled his nose at her, leaning close to whisper conspiratorially into the microphone.

“I can’t do that. You know that, silly.”

Sherlock leaned closer, dropped his voice further. “Please. I want to do this right. Not out here. In front of everyone.”

“Do what?”

From his coat pocket, Sherlock drew a small red box, clicked it open and held it up to the camera, his eyes creasing with the smile hidden behind it.

John stared at Sherlock. At the ring.

 _He’s. He said he. Didn’t love like that. He_. Confusion. Hurt. Jealousy. Roiling in his gut. Shame, too. John had fallen in love with Mary, and married her, relieved not to have to choose between the people he loved, because only one of them wanted. But now Sherlock wanted with Janine what he hadn’t wanted with John, and John didn’t know how he should feel about that. He knew what he _did_ feel. It was like fire, burning him hollow.

“Yes, come up!” Janine’s delight was palpable. The security reader flicked from red to blue and the lift opened. Sherlock puckered and blew her a kiss, then turned away and stepped inside.

Every trace of warmth disappeared from his expression. “Human error, works every time.”

John blinked at him. “That. That was Janine. You just proposed to Janine.”

“Yes. A little extreme, I agree, but I couldn’t find another way to work it. Fabulous coincidence, discovering I already knew Magnussen’s PA from the wedding. And we already got on. The statistics on groomsmen and bridesmaids have post-wedding flings are helpful; make a whirlwind romance that much more believable.”

“You just got engaged so you can break into an office.”

“Yes. Haven’t you been listening?”

The surge of relief John felt was so powerful he almost broke into giggles. Then he remembered that a real person’s real feelings were at the other end of Sherlock’s appalling case-related singlemindedness.

“What on earth are we going to do when we get there and I’m with you?”

“I’ll explain what I’m doing and you can keep her occupied while I open the safe and extract the letters Lady Smallwood commissioned me to retrieve.

“Keep her occupied?”

“Yes. I expect she’ll be crying a lot.”

“ _Sherlock._ She loves you!”

“Mmmmm,” Sherlock pretended to think about that, then. “No. She only thinks she does. We only met a few weeks ago. We’ve only been going out for four. We’ve never had sex…”

Another rush of relief, for which John felt very ashamed of himself and also like he might start humming a happy song. He crushed the impulse. _A bit not good._

The doors opened and Sherlock put on the bashful-excited fiancé act until he got far enough into the office to see that Janine wasn’t there.

“It’s a bit rude. I just proposed to her.”

And yet the room was empty, except for the faint waft of perfume. Not Janine’s, he knew. Clair de Lune. Mary’s preferred fragrance. Lady Smallwood’s too.

Silently, Sherlock gestured John towards the desk in the reception room, and John dutifully searched the drawers.

Sherlock found a room leading off from the main one. A seat by a security desk was still warm. On the desk, a bottle of cola. Sherlock sniffed it. _Chlorothiazide. A diaretic. Concentrated too. He won’t just be peeing, he’ll bit sitting there ten or fifteen minutes._

Sherlock returned to the main room to find John staring up the long white staircase. Sherlock cocked his head. He, too, could hear the voices now.

Two voices. Janine’s and another woman’s.

He signalled and they ran fleetly up the stairs together, and came to a sudden halt beyond the door to a large bedroom.

A sudden, horrified halt, as they recognised the second voice.

_Mary’s voice._

“Go back down now,” she was saying in low, urgent tones, “I’ll stay here till he’s done. We can finish then.”

“No. Clear out. We’ll make another time.”

“There isn’t another time, Janine.”

“There’d better be another one. You promised me. You and that boss of yours. You promised to get me away from Magnussen.”

John and Sherlock exchanged looks. Baffled and apprehensive.

“And we will, but first you have to get Sherlock out of here.”

 _Mary,_ Sherlock thought, hardly daring to breathe. _I should have asked. I should have asked you if you were..._

“Mary, he’s coming to propose to me, I can’t just throw him out on his ear. He’ll be downstairs wondering where I am right now.”

“ _Propose_ to you? You’ve only met him once, at my wedding!”

John thought, heart pounding, a sour taste in his mouth, could only think, _My wife. That’s my wife in there. What is my wife doing in there?_

“We’ve been dating. I thought you knew.”

“Why would I know that if neither of you _told_ me?”

“I thought he was working another angle for you. I thought… oh Jesus, what have you done, Mary? I thought he was part of your end game, and he’s not. He’s going to ruin everything!” Janine sounded almost hysterical.

Mary’s voice was steady. Calm. “Don’t panic. I promised you we’d have your back if you got me inside. I’ve got your passport, all your papers, right here.”

“Oh god, he’s going get me killed.”

“He’s not. Janine… put that away!”

Sherlock, John at his side, made his move, pushing open the door, entering a vast, bare bedroom.

And in her blind panic, Janine’s right hand, holding the compact Beretta, jerked up, pulled the trigger as she gasp-sobbed her fear.

Janine dropped the gun and fled – to the rear of the apartment, where a second private lift went straight to the garage.

Her flight was unimpeded because…

Because Sherlock, feeling the strange, sudden thud on his chest looked down in surprise at the bloom of red on his white shirt, just below the right pectoral. A belated cry, an exhalation of as much disbelief as sudden pain. Knees buckling.

John caught him as he fell, and there was no time for questions, no time for answers.

Only John tearing the shirt wide to examine the wound, and Mary suddenly on her knees beside them, muttering, “No, no, no, no, no, no…”

“Stop it,” John snapped, not looking up. Mary clamped her mouth shut. “I need you to focus. Put your hand here. Pressure. Keep it there.” He took off his jacket and shirt, and used the latter to compress the wound, moving Mary’s hands as needed until she was pushing down.

“Sherlock. Hold still. What did you take today?”

“Joh-ohn. M-Mary…” Sherlock gasped.

“It’s going to be all right,” John told him, not looking at Mary. “Tell me what you took last night. I need the paramedics to know what they’re dealing with.” John tugged out his phone, nearly dropped it with the blood making his hands slick.

“Not an ambulance,” said Mary briskly, “Call Mycroft.”

“Of course I’m calling a bloody ambulance.”

“They’ll have to get up here. We’ll have to explain it. Mycroft will send an ambulance and faster, too. Do it.” Mary’s voice was every bit as crisp and sharp as John’s. A voice of command.

John hesitated only a single heartbeat, and then he called Mycroft.

“Send an ambulance. Magnusson’s flat. Sherlock’s been shot. Don’t bloody ask, just send it. What? Yes, she’s here.”

 Then Mary gestured for the phone. John took over Sherlock’s care and listened as his wife spoke. Sherlock whimpered in pain, his breaths coming short, fast. John pressed an ear to Sherlock’s chest. Tapped and listened and, satisfied, took Sherlock’s wrist to check his pulse rate.

“Of course I didn’t bloody know what he was doing,” Mary snapped down the line, “Medics on the way? How long? Get to the garage, I’ll send John down with him. Well someone has to clean the bloody scene, don’t they? She’s gone. Who do you think shot him? John, the ambulance will be here in three. What’s the sit-rep?

The military command in her tone made John respond in ways that otherwise would have been beyond him. “Small calibre shot, six millimetres, hasn’t penetrated far but it may have cracked a rib and deflected. The right lung is clear for now, but I think the lobe’s been nicked with bone or a fragment.”

“You getting this?” Mary demanded into the phone.

“Usually I wouldn’t say it’s life-threatening,” John continued, “But he’s run down and he’s still got god knows what in his system.”

“Joh-ohn.”

“It’s all right. I’ve got you.”

“Don’t you put this on me,” Mary snarled down the phone, “You should have let me quit. No, screw you, you’re playing games with us. Punishing me for disobeying stupid orders. Well, this is what it’s come to. To hell with you Mycroft Holmes.”

She hung up and shoved the phone into her own pocket.

“We’ve got to get him downstairs. Ambulance will be here any minute.”

Sherlock’s skin was clammy as John wrapped his coat around Sherlock’s shoulders, then he and Mary slung their arms around him and carried him into the secret elevator. It whizzed down 32 floors.

Sherlock looked at Mary like he was utterly lost.

“A-a-agra?”

The look she gave him in return was infused with sorrow. “Sssh, now Sherlock,” she said, “We’re getting you out of here.”

“Agra.”

“You’ll be fine. I promise.” Her smile was at odds with her brimming eyes. “Come on, sunshine. Have I ever let you down?”

John was holding grimly onto Sherlock to keep him steady and would not look at Mary.

But Sherlock did. He looked her in the eye and said in a voice shaken with pain. “N-no. You never have.”

In the garage, John handed Sherlock into the care of the waiting paramedics and climbed into the ambulance with him.

Mary watched them.

"John," she said,the command gone, in its place desperation. "I can explain."

"Can you?"

"I'm not the enemy. I love you."

He wouldn't reply, and they didn't have time to do this now. Perhaps Sherlock wasn't at death's door, but the whole mission hung on a thread.

The doors closed on the ambulance and it tore into the daylight, leaving Mary and a man in black. She pulled a shirt over her bloodstained blouse, took up the bag her colleague offered to her, and, using  the keycard she’d acquired from Janine, the two of them returned to Magnussen’s penthouse to erase all evidence that Sherlock Holmes had ever been shot there.

 


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock is alive, but Mary and John are missing, and everything's going to hell.

Everything was.

               Dark.

Bright.

Strobe, dash, flash, pain.

_Breathe breathe breathe can’t._

_Mary. Agra._

_John._

Short sharp bang. Punch in the rib ( _Janine’s face, so shocked_ ) burn, burning in the blood, tang of blood in the back of the throat. ( _Not good_.)

                  _(Agra!_ )

Voices.

“Sherlock. Sherlock, look at me. What did you take last night? How long ago? Sherlock, please, come on. Cocaine? Heroine? Something else? _What did you take last night_?”

“He’s going into cardiac arrest.”

_“Sherlock, don’t you do this to me again!”_

“Clear!”

Punch to the chest.

**I told you the East Wind would come for you.**

_G-g-ghosts. Piss off._

Punch to the chest.

_Redbeard. Hey boy. They’re putting me down too. No fun, is it?_

Punch to the chest.

**Don’t do this to me again. Please. Don’t do this to me again.**

_John._

*

Sherlock woke up to all-over pain, sharpest in his chest, and John sitting grim-faced by his side.

“There you are,” said John. Grim-voiced too, although relief was mingled with the sternness.

“Here I am.” His own voice was a dry crackle.

“They had to intubate you,” John explained, “The bullet lodged between the rib and your lung, nicking the lung.  Had to clear it of the blood. They got the bullet out, though. Stopped the bleeding. You’ll be fine.”

Sherlock closed his eyes.

“And we found the list in your pocket. Of what you’d taken. For your _case_.”

John was angry, Sherlock realised. Very, very angry. About the drugs, yes. About Sherlock almost dying. But more though.

“Mary…” Sherlock began.

“Shut up.”

“She...”

“Shut up. I’m not ready to talk about Mary, or why you call her another name, or what the two of you have been up to. I’m not ready to talk about anything. Molly’s right. You can’t keep doing this to us. So many lies, Sherlock. I think my life is nothing but lies any more. You and Mary. You and Janine. Suiciding in front of me, not contacting me. Letting me think… and now. This. I don’t know what I’ve done in my life to ever deserve this. All these lies.”

“John.” He reached towards John as he rose, chair scraping. “Please.”

“I can’t be here right now. I want.  I want to break things, Sherlock. I want to smash everything until someone gives me some truth.”

Sherlock reached for the best truth he knew. _I love you._ But he didn’t say it. Some deep part of him knew that if he said it now, it would be seen as manipulation. Just another lie.

“Don’t go.” Wanting John to stay was a safer truth.

For a moment that seemed to speak to John. John rested his hand on the bed, as though he had to stop himself from reaching out to pat Sherlock’s leg. “You’re going to be fine. But I have to be by myself for a while. Later. When you… if you have anything to say to me that I can believe. Molly will know where to find me. I know she can keep a secret, even better than you can.” Infused with bitterness, that last part.

John left.

Sherlock closed his eyes, and wished he knew how he’d made such a mess of things.

Well. He knew.

All the lies. Not all his. Mary’s too. And the ones he’d told himself, most of all.

*

“Sherlock. Pretending to be asleep while I’m here has never worked.”

With a sigh, Sherlock opened his eyes. “What do you want?”

“I thought, since you managed to evade by the slightest of margins getting yourself killed, some kind of update might help you pass the time.”

“Go away.”

“We have Janine Flynn in protective custody. I suppose the murder charge can wait.”

“She didn’t mean to do it. She was startled and terrified. Wait. Protective custody?” He thought back, on the conversation he’d overheard at the Magnussen penthouse. “She was meant to be giving you the dirt on Magnussen. No.” His sluggish brain scrambled to untangle the implications. His heartrate jacked up. He could hear it on the monitor.

Mycroft’s hand on his wrist anchored him again.

“The plan was that Agra would befriend Magnussen’s PA, reveal potential blackmailable secrets about herself and so be brought into Magnussen’s sphere. It’s one of the terms of Ms Flynn’s employment, I believe. She brings in fresh leads, as it were, and Magnussen does not reveal her whereabouts to the Byrne gang.”

The name was familiar. Sherlock couldn’t make the memory surface.

“Gang warfare, Dublin. The Byrnes shot dead an unrelated father of three, and his five year old daughter, in a botched hit against the head of the Kearney gang. It appears this was a death too far for Janey Byrne, and she turned the gunman, her cousin, in. This was ten years ago, and she’s been living in London under a new identity ever since. Magnussen discovered her secret and has been holding the threat of exposure over her ever since. Of course, we discovered most of that after Agra had made contact and built the relationship.”

“Agra. Mary. Where is she?”

“Doing her job.”

Sherlock swallowed hard. “Did you send her into John’s path?”

“No. That was another of her irritatingly freeform decisions, along with telling him you were alive. It’s infuriating. She used to be so reliable.”

Hands curled into useless fists, without the strength to use them, Sherlock grit his teeth. “I don’t believe you. Why did you disguise her voice, if not so you could plant her in our lives later?”

“Oh, brother mine, you don’t know how hard you make it to keep you alive, sometimes. You’d already refused to work further with two of my best handlers, before I pulled Ms Morstan out of analysis and back to contact work. I judged it best to keep Agra as obscure as possible to keep you engaged and working with her. A very effective strategy, I might add. Or it would have been, if she hadn’t fallen victim to the spy version of the Florence Nightingale syndrome.”

 _Nurses falling in love with their patients._ Perhaps what he’d sensed from Agra, and what he’d felt for his handler, was never really love. Just a syndrome, and transference on his part.

“No,” Mycroft continued, tone full of derision. “Ms Morstan went to see John Watson _without_ permission, purely to assess for herself the effects of your death upon him, the better to support you, she claims. She felt the reports she read on him lacked sufficient insight. The next thing we know, she’s _dating_ him, and declaring her intention to retire, once we brought you back.”

“And you wouldn’t let her retire. One more mission, Agra told me in our last conversation. Punishment for disobedience.”

“We had begun to set that mission up in her first month as your mission contact. It was of necessity a long game. She always was an excellent handler, until that other business in Tbilisi. She’s an excellent analyst, too. She’ll be a loss to the service when she’s gone.”

“Stop it,” said Sherlock, low, a growl, then rose to almost a shout. “Stop it. You don’t know what you’ve done.”

“I didn’t do anything. I’ve held an agent to her oath, and I’ve set in train a plan to rid the British government of a significant security risk in Magnussen – which you have very nearly derailed with your _hobby_.”

“Janine was in the bedroom this morning when you blabbed all over the flat. She must have heard you.”

Mycroft appeared genuinely surprised by the news. “Really?  Your _bedroom_?” Disbelief gave way to sardonic irritation. “So you weren’t trying to break my wrist for the sheer perverse pleasure of it?”

“I’m willing to try again now, if you like.” Sherlock was actually trying to crawl out of the bed to get to him.

Mycroft’s riposte vanished as the heart monitor ticked up again with Sherlock’s laboured breathing. He pushed Sherlock down by the shoulder to make him rest until his distress settled. It didn’t settle much, struggling as he was against Mycroft’s touch. Two nurses hurried in a second later.

“You’ll have to leave now, Mr Holmes,” said the younger one.

“Love to,” wheezed Sherlock, trying to rise. They pushed him down again.

Mycroft stepped away, pausing at the door.

“I meant to thank you. For keeping the list, as I asked. Your surgeon told me it was material in treating the shock to your system induced by the gunshot wound.”

Sherlock, slumped back on the bed, skin pale and sheened with perspiration, didn’t reply.

*

Greg came to visit Sherlock in hospital. So did Molly. (She didn't say a word about John.) Mrs Hudson came. Even Anderson came, bearing flowers and a card. Sherlock threw both of them at Anderson’s head.

“If you were any bloody use at all, you’d find John.”

Two days. No John. No Mary. No word.

On the morning of the third day, Mrs Hudson returned with home baked biscuits, a half hour of wittering gossip that made Sherlock’s head ache, and a note in a small card that had been pushed through the letterbox.

_Looking for J. Explain all soon. AGRA._

By the afternoon of the third day, when Mycroft came to visit his brother again, all he found was an empty bed.

*

John had vanished without a trace. Mary hadn’t been able to locate him. Nor had Mycroft, which, considering it was John, was a hell of a feat. John Watson had many fine qualities, but he wasn’t known for his cunning.

The thing about John, though, Sherlock knew, was that John knew cunning people. He’d once been part of a medical team. He’d once been part of an army unit. John understood very well the value of teamwork.

Molly, when pressed disavowed all knowledge. She said John had never spoken to her at all, and she hadn't the first idea where to find him.

John had last been seen three days ago, entering the In and Out Naval and Military Club in St James’s Square. He was never seen leaving it, but Sherlock determined that a fellow member had helped to smuggle him out via the kitchens to a barge on the Thames. Sherlock, using his homeless network, thought he’d traced John as far as Putney Embankment, but that turned out to be a decoy.

Mrs Hudson, who had been driving Sherlock from place to place in the sports car, and none too happy with some of the insalubrious destinations they’d reached, gave Sherlock a hand going up the stairs.

“You’ll pop a stitch and end up right back where you started!”

_I’m alone. No John. No Mary. Alone and useless. Back to where I started. With no one to blame but myself. Well, and Mycroft._

Sherlock scrubbed a hand across his face and sank into his armchair, staring into space.

Later, he blamed exhaustion and pain and despair for taking so long to notice the message pinned to the blanket hanging over the back of John's chair.

**23 Leinster Gardens.  10pm. JW**

Sherlock spent some time rubbing his thumb over the initials. A deliberate echo of how Sherlock had always signed his texts. A habit from when he used to text from whatever phone was nearest. The note was in John’s handwriting, but the way it was pinned so neatly to the blanket suggested Molly Hooper had delivered it.

At 9pm, Sherlock went to the front door of the Leinster Gardens façade, built in the 1860s to hide the railway cutting from view. One of Sherlock’s old boltholes. He must have told John about it once and John, methodical if not cunning, had made a note.

Sherlock slipped inside and saw the shadowed shape in the hall. For nearly a second he hoped, but the scent of Clair de Lune was in the air.

“Mary.”

“Sherlock, god, what are you doing out of hospital?”

“I was invited.” He held up the square of paper.

“So was I.” She held up an identical square. “It was in the flat when I got back. He didn’t put it there. I think he gave Molly the key and asked her to leave it for me.”

They stared at each other in awkward silence for a moment, and then simultaneously:

“Are you all right?”

“Where have you been?”

Silence again. They started together again.

“Short story, not dead.”

“Looking for John and salvaging the mission.”

And then Sherlock shut his mouth and gestured to Mary to speak.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“I’m sure you are. It doesn’t help. I should have asked you to explain as soon as I suspected who you really were.”

“What gave me away?” she asked.

“At the wedding. ‘We’ll make our own traditions, sunshine.’ Agra used to call me that. Though I think I recognised elements of your voice patterns long before, even disguised. I knew every cadence of that voice except its natural sound. I kept dreaming of you, with Agra’s voice. It took an egregiously long time for me to realise what was niggling at me. It never occurred to me that the person I’d trusted with my life; the person who kept watch on John for me; could be marrying my best friend.” He had begun to shake again. He needed to sit down, but this narrow hall offered no respite for him. His grip on his emotions shook unsteadily free.

 _I am not myself. I have not been who I was for a long time_. _John's right. I came back different._

“Agra was my lifeline," he said, his wholly body shaking with the truth of it. "You had my back. You kept me safe. You kept me alive. I _loved_ you. I _thought_ I did. You’ve used me, used John…”

Stung, Mary snapped back at him. “That’s not what happened, and _you’re_ one to talk. You lied to John. You let him think you were dead. You didn’t see what that did to him. I did. I saw every minute of it.”

“He was never supposed to be at St Bart’s! He wasn’t supposed to _see_. He was supposed to be told after the fact.”

“No. You lie to yourself too. You needed a believable witness. An audience who would convince Moriarty’s watchers. You knew he’d see. The delay of the message wasn’t your fault – that was pure Mycroft – but doing that? Making him watch you jump? That was pure Sherlock Holmes.”

Sherlock wobbled at the knees and stretched out a hand to steady himself on the wall before he fell. And Mary was suddenly there, holding him up.

“What the hell are you doing? Killing yourself after I worked so hard to keep you alive.”

“You…” Sherlock gasped for a breath, leaning into her for support until he could catch one. “The moment I realised Janine was Magnussen’s PA, it started to come together. It couldn’t be a coincidence that you were best friends with the contact I needed to get to Magnussen. But I couldn’t say anything until I was sure. I. I didn’t want.  To be right. Why? Mary. Why? What’s your game? I don’t understand.”

“There’s no game _to_ understand,” Mary said softly, her voice full of sorrow. “I never meant to lie. I never meant to hurt him, or you. My only job was to help you finish your mission and get you home alive. But all the reports were that John Watson was… failing to thrive. I went to see him for myself. I knew how much he mattered to you, and he was the key to keeping you going. All I meant to do was see him, make an assessment and a recommendation for how he should be managed to achieve that and instead…”

“Instead what?”

“He wasn't ordinary. He wasn't just the key to you. He was John Watson. He was _wonderful_.” Mary’s voice was tremulous now. In the poor light, Sherlock could see her eyes spilling over with tears, face wet. “I didn’t expect him to be wonderful. We’d tracked him to St Bart’s. I was passing through to collect a message from my father. And there he was. I spoke to him just for a moment. He was so...lost. So I went back again, thinking maybe it would help him, to have a mystery to solve. And. And he was so. Kind. So sad and so kind. And all he wanted to do was help. And it was like he lit up.”

“Yes,” said Sherlock, nodding. “I remember that. I remember that about him. The fire in him, when he came with me that first day.”

“I didn’t mean to see him again. I knew it was a bad idea. But he asked me out for a drink and I liked his smile. So I went. And then I kept making excuses to keep seeing him.” She shook her head. “I wanted to tell him who I was, but Mycroft forbade it. He thought it was too risky to you, for John to know.”

“My brother likes to forbid things.”

“And you like flouting it when he does.”

“So do you, apparently.”

She laughed weakly. “I tried. But when I decided I couldn’t go through with the wedding without telling him, Mycroft called. He has uncanny timing.”

“Ah. Not your father declining to attend, then.”

“No. My boss, telling me if I broke cover while Janine was there, he’d have me picked up outside the church and exiled to an enforced posting to the Shetland Isles. And then you deduced my pregnancy and… I didn’t know what to do. So I didn’t do anything. I told myself… it wasn’t a lie. A sin of omission, perhaps. But not an outright lie.”

“But Janine knows about you.  You were giving her false papers when we arrived at the penthouse.”

“That came towards the end. Once we'd recruited her, she was to arrange the last meeting between me and Magnussen, where I was to buy silence on my secret in exchange for a more valuable one. And then Mycroft could make his move. We could bring Magnussen down, and I’d be free to be … whoever I wanted to be.”

Sherlock had his back against the wall now. His eyes closed. “Do you love him? Is any of it real?”

She leaned back on the other side of the corridor, her hands clutching each other. “Of course I love him. How could I not? The only lies were who I really worked for; and that I knew you, and you didn’t know that you knew me.”

“You didn’t have to insert yourself into his life like that.”

“But I did. He was falling, Sherlock. You needed him to know you were alive, but he needed to know it even more. God, Sherlock, he couldn’t walk past Bart’s without flinching. He could hardly say your name. So when it was the only way I could make you fight back in Minsk, I finally decided Mycroft’s orders were rubbish and I made sure John knew. To save you, and to save him.”

“It was a risk. I might have died anyway.”

“No. No. You’d fight through hell to get back to John Watson if you knew he was counting on you.”

Sherlock exhaled shakily. He looked at his watch. “He’ll be here soon.”

“Do you think he’ll let me explain?”

“I’m not sure he’ll even believe I didn’t realise who you were.”

A cloth draped over an old chair at the end of the passage stirred. Fell away.

John rose from behind it, dusting down his jacket, his jeans.

“James Sholto was right. Best way to trap a hunter is use their own traps against them and get there first." He cocked an eyebrow at them. He didn't look pleased. "It’s certainly one way to finally get the truth out of someone.”

* **  
**


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Leinster Gardens and Baker Street. And then Christmas at the Holmes cottage. Friendship, love and futures under question. Family history too, secret plans, and mysteries in between.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This section and one or two of the following ones, will, like the episode, jump back and forth between Baker Street on 18th December and Christmas Day.

**Leinster Gardens, December 18 th**

Mary and Sherlock stared at John and said nothing. Obviously he’d heard everything they’d said. Obviously he was still angry.

John strode straight to Sherlock and took up his wrist to take his pulse. While doing so, he fished his phone from his pocket.

Sherlock could just make out discolourations between the keys. _My blood. He called Mycroft while his hands were covered in my blood. He hasn’t been able to get it clean._

“Molly? Yeah, we were right. Can you bring the car round? Meet you outside.”

John wrapped an arm around Sherlock’s back. “Mary, take his other side.”

He was still all doctor-stern and nothing like friendly.

“John. I can explain.”

“No.” John cut her off. “Right now, you’ll help me get him to the car so he stops putting stress on his wound.”

Mary shut her mouth and did as Doctor Watson told her.

Molly was waiting outside with the back door of her boxy blue car wide open. “1968 Vanden Plas Princess,” she explained, instead of addressing the fact that Mary and John were having to help Sherlock into it. “Belonged to my grandad. Lots of room. For.” She looked down at Sherlock, who had gasped as John helped him lay flat along the bench seat. Her words dried up; mouth quivering, eyes creased in pain at his pain.

John patted her arm. “One day, you’ll find me in your lab and you’ll have to write Cause of Death: Sherlock Holmes’.”

“One day,” she said sharply, “I’ll have him on my slab and I’ll have to write, Cause of Death: wilful stupidity’.”

“Yeah. There is that.”

Any cruelty in the black jokes was undercut by the unhappiness which fed them.

_I shred them. The people I love._

“Mary. In the front with Molly,” John ordered.

Mary obeyed while John squashed himself into the back, tucking his feet under the front seats so he could tend to Sherlock.

“Molly, I need a magazine. Large piece of paper. Something I can roll into a cone.”

Molly flipped open the glove box and waved to Mary and returned to navigating her way to Baker Street. Mary retrieved the original owner’s log book, noting it was still maintained in Molly’s neat handwriting. She passed it over to the back seat.

“Do we need St Bart’s?”

John had made a makeshift stethoscope by shaping a cone out of the log book to listen to Sherlock’s heart and chest cavity, tapping at intervals with two fingers. Sherlock hissed with pain. John squeezed his hand briefly.

“No. If he takes it easy from here he should be fine.”

The rest of the drive was spent in silence. Mary stared at the road ahead. Molly, lips compressed in a tight line, did the same. Sherlock lay with his eyes closed on the leather bench seat while John kept two fingers on his pulse; retrieved his pocket torch to check the dilation of his pupils, used the back of his hand to gauge Sherlock’s temperature. Periodically, he’d count breaths to calm Sherlock’s too-quick breathing.

“In, two three four five, out, two three four five. Again for me.” Pulse check. “Better. Stay still.”

This when Sherlock tried to sit up. “I…”

“I said. Stay. Still.”

Sherlock obeyed.

At Baker Street, Molly and Mary both helped to get Sherlock up the stairs into the flat. He sniped against the fussing until a forbidding look from John shut him down. He went meekly after that. Allowed his friends – if they were still his friends – to settle him on the sofa.

“Water,” John said to Mary, and he went to fetch the old first aid kit from the bathroom cupboard.

Sherlock looked up at Molly, who was regarding him with a weariness he could hardly bare to look at.

“It’s all right,” she said, “I still love you. Oh. I mean. No. I. Well. You know what I mean, I suppose. But. I can’t. Like that. Anymore. I’ll always be your friend, but I don’t think. I can’t. I’m not what you want, or need. I know. But they are. John and Mary are what you want and what you need. And you’d better start acting like that means something to you. If it does.”

“Molly…”

“No, Sherlock. Not a word. It’s hard enough. I don’t know how to fall out of love. But I’ll have to try. We can still be friends, can’t we? Even if I don’t know how to fall out of love with you?”

“Yes,” he said, his voice faint from exhaustion and pain, but his eyes bright with all the feeling he wanted to convey. He was not in love with Molly. But he loved her. “I’d like that. To still be friends. I’m sorry.”

“No need.” She found a watery smile. “You can’t help who you love.”

She turned as John returned with the box of medical supplies.  Sherlock wondered how much of that exchange had been overheard by him, or by Mary.

“I’ll be off, then, John. Call if you need anything.” Everyone pretended not to see her dashing at her eyes with her sleeves.

John placed the supplies on the coffee table and kissed her on the cheek. “Thank you. For everything.”

She nodded, unable to speak, and left.

“Right. You.” He pointed to Mary. “Give that glass here, and sit in that chair. No. Not my chair. Not Sherlock’s. The client chair. We’ll have to do it from this side because I don’t want him sitting up yet.” He gave Sherlock the water and two paracetamol and helped him sit enough to drink it.

“Let me explain…” she began.

“No,” snapped John. “No. You don’t. I’ve had enough of people deciding they’ll explain my life to me when they feel like it. You’ll sit there and I’ll ask questions and,” his hard gaze took in Sherlock too, “You’ll both be answering. And I swear to god, if I think there’s a whisper of a lie from either of you, I’m gone. Just. _Gone_.”

Mary sat. Her gaze met Sherlock’s. They both knew that John absolutely meant it.

They waited for him to ask his first question.

*

**_One week later. The Holmes cottage. Christmas Day._ **

Mary could hear her boss moaning to his mother about the time from the living room.

“”How can it only be two o’clock? I’m in agony.”

“Mikey, is this your laptop?’

“Upon which depends the security of the free world, yes. And you’re shelling peas on it. And since you bring it up, Mycroft is the name you gave me. If you could possibly struggle all the way to the end.”

“You liked it well enough when you were little.”

“Yes, but when I became a man I put away childish things.”

“You put away childish things when you were eight years old.” Sherlock, sniping as usual.

“And here are you, still speaking, thinking and understanding as a child.”

“Your brother’s just out of hospital, Mike. Don’t start.”

Mary could just imagine the smug ‘I’m the favourite’ grin Sherlock would flash at Mycroft then. And the answering expression on Mycroft’s face, the scrunch of the face that would in his youth would have been accompanied by the poking out of a tongue.

“Here you go dear.” Mr Holmes was back with an armful of firewood, which he placed just so on the hearth.  He turned to find Mary holding a book. _The Dynamics of Combustion_ by Leandra Holmes. He beamed to see her with it. “My wife is something of a genius,” he said. “She stepped away from the academic work for the children and then. Well. She never quite went back.” He cast a glance to the photographs on the mantle, his fond smile faltering.

They were the usual candid family shots and one or two professionally posed ones. Mrs and Mrs Holmes with Mycroft, and then Mycroft and Eurus. Later family pictures with Mycroft and Sherlock, the boys together, or individually.  Never Sherlock and Eurus. None at all of Eurus after baby Sherlock arrived.

“That’s adorable, that one,” said Mary, pointing.

Mr Holmes’s melancholy dissolved under a happy smile. He picked up the picture so he could show it more closely to Mary.

In it, a little boy who was unmistakably Sherlock, with a solemn-sweet face and blue-grey eyes, brandished a little wooden sword, an outsized pirate hat on his unruly curls. Beside him was another little boy in an eyepatch, his own toy cutlass raised in triumph.

“That was Sherlock’s friend Victor. They were inseparable. Then Victor’s mother was posted overseas to the Australian embassy. It broke poor Sherlock’s heart. He had difficulty making friends, even then. Too bright for the others his age, I suppose. Mycroft and Eurus had gone through it at the same age. But Victor seemed to think Sherlock was a wonderful adventure, and Sherlock thought the same of Victor.”

Mary gazed at the little boy in the eyepatch. Dark skin, brown eyes, black hair. Only the devilish grin of the five year old was anything like John, but in that he was everything like her husband.

Mr Holmes retrieved another photo from the mantle. “Here he is with Redbeard, his dog, a year later. Funny story. When they played pirates, Sherlock was always Blackbeard and Victor was Redbeard. When we got him the puppy, Sherlock instantly named him Redbeard. Red Setter. Inevitable probably, but still. Perhaps.” He frowned. “Not funny so much as a little sad.”

Mary stared at the new picture. Young Sherlock, around eleven. A warm, sunny boy, at least here, grinning over the shoulder of the Red Setter he was hugging as the dog stretched its neck to lick his human’s face.  Unadulterated love. Not long before it all went wrong, judging from Sherlock’s age. Mary knew what had happened to Redbeard the dog, but not Victor Redbeard the Boy Pirate. Something Mycroft had left off the dossier.

“Broke his heart again when his lovely dog got sick. Cancer, you know. We tried everything to save him, but it became crueller to keep him alive and suffering. I don’t know that Sherlock ever really forgave me.” He pushed at his eyes with the heel of his hand. “Oh, look at me, silly old buffer. It’s Christmas. I’ll get you tea, Mrs Watson, shall I?”

“Lovely. Thanks.”

“Oh, and here’s Doctor Watson!”

John entered and was indeed wearing his stethoscope.

“John, please, Mr Holmes.”

“Only if you’ll call me Giles.”

“Giles then.” He nodded, sealing the deal.

“Tea?”

“Lovely, oh but not quite yet. I need to change Sherlock’s dressings. Mary, if you could give me a hand?”

“Of course.” She took his hand and he helped her up. Her baby bump was still very small. Hardly noticeable, except to the man who knew her body so intimately.

Sherlock was waiting in the downstairs spare room, which he was using in lieu of having to climb the stairs to his old room on the first floor. He sat on the edge of the bed, shirt off, the bandages around his chest untidy.

John carefully unwrapped them, dropping them into a bin, and examined the healing wound.

“Doing well,” he said. He thoughtfully warmed up the stethoscope by puffing on it before pressing it to Sherlock’s chest and back. “Good. Your lungs are clear, heart rate good. Blood pressure.” He took Sherlock’s pulse, muttering that he ought to have brought the more equipment.

“Stop fussing, John.”

John drew back. “I’m your doctor. It’s my job to fuss when you’ve been shot.”

“IT is, you know,” Mary confirmed, holding the fresh dressing ready while John swabbed the site.

“I know.” Sherlock sighed. “I hate fuss.”

“You love fuss,” Mary countered.

She saw John’s half hidden smile as he worked. She watched Sherlock watching him.

“Yes,” Sherlock finally admitted. “From some people.”

John fastened the fresh bandages and handed Sherlock his shirt.

“You’ll do. You don’t have to come with us to Magnussen, you know. This is set up to work without you if we have to.”

“Are you forbidding me? As my doctor?”

“No. We need you there. I know that. I just…”

“Stop fussing. I don’t like it all the time.”

“Have you got everything?”

Sherlock nodded to the dresser drawer. John opened it and withdrew three things.

A newspaper article about accidental the death of five year old Eurus Holmes, after wandering off from the family home at Musgrave and falling into a well at the border of the property.

A photograph of a chubby seven year old Mycroft and his five year old sister; the little girl clinging joyfully to her older brother, he looking down on her with devoted delight.

And finally, a faded, dusty diary, bearing scorch marks, that had obviously been stored in the attic for decades.  John opened it at the final entry. It read, in seven year old Mycroft’s measured, beautiful handwriting:

_It wasn’t an accident, and I’m not sorry._


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> December 18th. John demands honesty, and perhaps gets more than he expected. Christmas Day. The mission to Appledore goes terribly wrong.

**Baker Street, December 18 th**

John stood at one end of the coffee table. His best friend was stretched out on the sofa, pale but recovering from his exertions. His wife sat in a not quite comfortable chair on the other side of the table. One leg of that chair was slightly shorter than the others. It never felt quite right. Sherlock had always said it was very useful for keeping clients on edge and more likely to reveal details they’d rather kept hidden. Clients, Sherlock had said, were not always to be trusted.

John faced Mary first.

“That day in the park. Did you really need my help?”

Mary’s hands were folded in her lap. She unfolded them, rubbed them against the thighs of her trousers, fussed at the legs then finally let them rest on her knees.

“No. I didn’t know what it would be, exactly, but I knew it was a message from my father.”

“You’d already clocked me for your report. Why did you ask me to come with you?”

She blew out a breath between pursed lips. “I wanted to know you better.”

“Why? For him?” A jerk of the head in Sherlock’s direction.

“No. That was why I altered my route, to see you for myself. And. And why I came back to see if you’d come to Postman's Park with me. But then.” Swallow. “But there was something in the way you held yourself. So self-contained. When you had something to do, someone to help, how you… it was like you were waking up. And.” Swallow. “I thought I saw a glimpse of why he cared so much. And I wanted to see more of that. For myself. I.” Puff of breath. “I stopped wanting to know about the asset that would help me help Sherlock Holmes. I wanted to know John Watson.”

“I suppose I should be flattered.”

She made no reply, but looked at her fingers pressed hard into her knees.

“It never occurred to you to tell me who you were? Why you were there?”

“It occurred to me, but I was under direct orders not to do so, or to tell you Sherlock was alive.”

“You defied those orders easily enough later on.”

“Not easily, no. But when it became untenable to obey them, yes. I disobeyed them. There were consequences.”

“Which are?”

“The Magnussen mission – the current extent of it, at least. My role earlier was much smaller. At the time of the breach itself – the threat of imprisonment. Mycroft decided I was too valuable, as Sherlock wouldn’t work with another handler. Afterwards… the threat of exile to a remote location for monitoring of sea traffic. For the rest of my life. The last one was made again just before the wedding. I… I didn’t want to go. I didn’t want to leave you.”

“So you lied to me.”

“Yes.”

John nodded, and turned to Sherlock.

“And you. Did you… did you really intend that I should see you jump off a building to what I was meant to believe was your death?”

Sherlock didn’t answer, and didn’t answer, and didn’t answer. John watched Sherlock turning over and over in his mind how to answer that without admitting to anything. He saw something he thought might be shame pass over Sherlock's features. Like that Christmas when he was so cruel about deducing Molly’s gift. That expression gave John hope that whatever was coming might be sincere.

“Yes.”

It cost them both for Sherlock to say it.

“Why?”

“Because. At the time. I thought it was the best way to save your life.”

“Don’t make this my fault.”

“Not your fault,” Sherlock said, “But the threat was real. I couldn’t know if Mycroft’s team would get all the snipers in time. I couldn’t know what back-up plans Moriarty had made until I had the opportunity to investigate. I was operating with too little time and stakes that were too high. I… arranged to send you away. I think. I think I hoped you wouldn’t make it back in time. But. Yes. I planned. Expected. That you would. I told myself… it was. Worth it. If I got word to you as soon as possible afterwards. But… those arrangements were countermanded and intercepted.”

“By Agra?”

“No. I didn’t start to work with Agra until a month later. After I refused to work with the other two idiots Mycroft tried to assign to me. Morons. I’m lucky they didn’t kill me in the first month with their incompetence.”

Despite himself, John quirked a grin at that. He could just imagine the conversations. He sobered his expression, though.

“And there really wasn’t another option for what you did?”

“Perhaps. I thought of three or four later. But back then? I ran out of time. Whatever I planned had to be set up. I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I just ran out of time, and there were three of you he meant to kill.”

Sherlock’s voice shook. John stretched out a hand to pat at Sherlock’s nearest foot.

“That’s what Molly said upset you the most, when you were leaving.  That it was the best you could do under the circumstances, and that she had to keep silent unless I came to her myself.”

“You already know of this, then.” Sherlock sounded aggrieved.

“Corroboration,” John said. “I think you can see why I might need that.”

Sherlock scowled.

“And you can wipe that look off your face,” John scowled back. “You forget. You spent so long working alone that when I came along you used me as an adjunct. You hardly told me anything. I know you like your surprises, but sometimes you’ve got poor judgement about when to share the plan.”

“And you’ve got better judgement?”

“Yes, I do. At least, in the army, in a hospital, during surgery – you have to trust the people with you. You have to know that they know their job, their place in the operation. And you put up with a lot of their bullshit because you trust them with your life, or the lives of your patients. You have to. Too much mystery in any of those places, and people end up screwing up because they don’t know how they fit into the whole. Teamwork isn’t about blind trust, Sherlock. It’s about knowing how everything fits together so you know when things are going tits up, and you know how best to compensate for sudden cock-ups in the mission. That’s supposed to be what we had. Maybe it’s something you had in the field with Agra.”

“Eventually,” muttered Mary from her chair. “We had some spectacular cock-ups on the way.”

John looked sharply at her. She met his gaze. “He’s sometimes frankly stupid about following orders, or even taking advice,” she said.

“I’ll bet Sholto never told you everything on a mission," snapped Sherlock, " _Need to know_ and all.”

It was the wrong thing to say.

“And what was it I needed to know, Sherlock? That it was all right to watch yet another one of my friends die when I couldn’t stop it or save him? Or later, that you’d rather go off without me than have me watch your back?”

“John!” Mary protested.

“You stay out of this. This is between him and me. Well, Sherlock. How about it. What was my _need to know_ status in that particular scenario?”

Everything hung on the next utterance, and Sherlock might have blown it too, except for Mary, who across the bristling silence simply said, “Minsk.” It deflated Sherlock completely, the defiance washed away by the memory of why he’d kept fighting to live when it would have been so much easier to let go.

“That I would have done anything to protect you,” Sherlock said in a voice weary with the burden. “That I’d have jumped off that roof and died in reality if it was the only way to do that. That I would lie to you, and let you suffer, as long as it meant you lived to curse me for it. That I would have died for that cause in Minsk, only the person I knew as Agra convinced me to live for it instead.”

The raw honesty in it stripped layers from them both.

“Why should I believe you?” John’s voice was ragged.

“I don’t know,” Sherlock confessed. “But it’s true.”

A terrible fragility held them all in place, until John broke it, not by surging forward but by very deliberately taking one step, then another, then another, then knelt by Sherlock’s side.  Bowed over Sherlock, taking his long hand and pressing it between his own two blunter ones. Pressed his forehead to Sherlock’s shoulder. Breathed deeply.

“Sherlock.”

“I’m sorry, John. But I’d do it all again if it was the only way to save you from Moriarty.”

John huffed a damp-sounding laugh but didn’t look up. “That sounds fairly honest,” he said. He raised his head at last. “But don’t. Please don’t. I don’t think I could survive it again.”

“I’m absolutely positive I couldn’t.”

John shook his head, but that old smile was back: _this madman; my madman._

He turned to sit on the floor, back to the sofa. Sherlock draped his arm across John’s shoulder, around his torso, and John held Sherlock’s hand up against his chest as he looked at Mary.

“You kept him alive. You got him through that and brought him back.”

“Yes. He didn’t always make it easy. He took risks trying to get it done sooner. Trying to come home.”

“Thank you.”

Mary nodded, but her jaw worked, her breath quivering. The tears gathered in her eyes, like she thought this was goodbye.

“Do you love me?” John asked.

“Yes.” The tears fell. “My God, John, ye-es.” She hiccupped a sob on the last word, her mouth twisting in misery. “From that first day at Postman’s Park. I could see why he did, and then I loved you for myself. Because you…”

“I’m wonderful. Yeah. You said.” John pushed himself to his feet and carefully placed Sherlock’s hand back on the sofa. He bent down and kissed Sherlock’s forehead, then he walked around the coffee table to Mary.

“The lies are done?”

“Yes. John. Yes.”

“Good.” He cupped her face in his hands and bent to kiss her.

She cried so hard with relief that she could only cling to his shoulders, and the he hugged her tight, her face pressed into his belly. “Sssh, ssssh,” he said, stroking her hair. “It’s going to be all right.”

When she’d calmed he kissed her again. When they broke apart, she held his hands, tight.

“John. It’s not over. I have to complete this mission. The consequences…”

“The Shetland Isles. I remember.” Another quirked smile, but there was a sourness in it this time. “How much danger are you and the baby in?”

“I…” He saw the moment when she considered lying about that, and watched it pass. “Safe enough, I think. He’s a blackmailer, not a murderer. The material he has on me isn’t as dangerous to me as he thinks. But as a mission, we’re in too deep now. I don’t know everything that will happen if we fail, but it’ll be messy. My secret isn’t a secret from Mycroft, it won’t affect me. Others may fall.”

“Okay. We’d better not fail then. So let’s have it. The mission parameters. Hang on.” He returned to Sherlock. “You’re all right to sit up now, I think. Mary, a hand.”

Sherlock grumped at the fuss, but he let them help him until he was sitting on the sofa, his feet propped up on the coffee table. Mary sat beside Sherlock. John sat on the coffee table on one side of Sherlock’s feet and patted the bare space on his other side. Mary put her feet up too, and there John sat, a hand on Sherlock’s ankle, a hand on Mary’s.

“Right. First. What does Magnussen have on you?”

Mary grimaced. “He thinks I'm a criminal working for my father.”

“The jewel thief.”

“That part’s true, and my name really is Morstan. But Dad changed his name not long after he abandoned my mother and me. He had another family, you see. He called himself Waters with them.”

She waited. John didn’t know what she was waiting for. Sherlock took a moment, but then he sat up in surprise. “The Waters Family crime spree.”

Mary nodded. “He’d been in prison for a decade after the last time he got caught. The first thing he did was plan another series of robberies with his sons – my half brothers, who I’ve never met, by the way. More ambitious than the old jewellery heists. Mycroft’s got all that in my dossier, nothing new there. But he was just beginning the planning to bring Magnussen down. Since I came out of analysis, he decided to use me in the field to set this up, and then had another agent contact my father pretending to be me, offering… assistance.”

“Which is how they got away with their crimes for so long,” said Sherlock with the revelation, “Help from a hacker.”

“Until we had enough to establish me as the daughter who’d helped her not very tech-minded old man to get away with burglary.  We made me a long time criminal aiding and abetting long time criminals. Then we dished the hacker help, and let the Met catch them. I suppose I should feel a little bad, but he is the man who thought a gemstone every year for a few years would make up for having a father who preferred another family over me.”

“Greg’ll be pissed off if he ever finds out,” observed John drily. “Right. So you befriend Janine, over time admit that your father is a jewel thief who you help out from time to time for a cut of the spoils, and then what? Janine shops you to Magnussen? No offence, I wouldn’t have thought you’d be compromised enough to interest him.”

“I’m a small fish on my own, but I’m leverage to get to a bigger fish. One of the biggest.”

Sherlock stared at her. “Mycroft."

"My boyfriend's best friend is brother to the head of MI6. Magnussen insisted I could work out how to do something with that."

" _That's_ what you're up to? You’re selling Mycroft to Magnussen? On what grounds? My brother hasn’t the imagination or the temperament to be anything but blameless. His rectitude is one of his most irritating habits.”

Mary stretched out her hand and rested it on Sherlock’s forearm. “I think blameless and guiltless aren’t the same thing.”

Sherlock’s brow furrowed. “What on earth do you mean?”

“I mean Eurus.”

Sherlock blinked hard. John cocked his head. “Eurus?”

“Our sister,” Sherlock said.

“I didn’t know you had a sister. You’ve never mentioned her.” John was on the verge of bristling again.

“I never knew her. She died before I was born. An accident. She wandered off out of the house. They found her drowned in the well at the edge of the property a few hours later. It’s one of the reasons Mycroft is such an overbearing ass.”

“Sherlock,” Mary said, “It’s the only reason he’s such an overbearing ass.”

“Wait, you knew about the sister?” John demanded.

“Part of the dossier, on Sherlock. One of the things I had to know to help keep him focused.”

“I don’t know why,” Sherlock grumbled, “I’ve just said I never knew her.”

“Ghost at the feast, you always say,” countered Mary, “Mycroft tried to frighten you into line with her memory, calling her the East Wind. Eurus is the Greek God of the East Wind. You didn’t know her, but she’s part of you, all right.”

“Is this you being an analyst, Agra?” Sherlock half sneered.

“Of course it is. It was his way of trying to spook you into obedience when you were growing up. It never worked of course. He thought I could use it to make you do as you were told, so the first thing I learned was that bringing her up was a sure way to make you a contrary bastard.”

“My god,” breathed Sherlock, half in outrage and half in awe, “That’s what you were doing in Estonia. Making me a contrary bastard so I’d go to Haapsalu after all!”

“Yep,” said Mary, smiling smugly.

“We can catch me up on the good old days of trying not to die in pursuit of Moriarty’s gang later, hmm?” suggested John drily. “How does this work in selling Mycroft to Magnussen?”

“We’ve made up a story,” said Mary, suddenly solemn, “That Eurus’s death wasn’t an accident at all.”

John could hardly credit how aghast Sherlock was at the news. “Mycroft agreed to that? No. Wait. It’s his idea, obviously. How are _you_ supposed to know it?”

“He’s my husband’s best friend’s brother. We’re bound to meet socially once in a while. Magnussen thinks he has me over a barrel. So, a little rohypnol in a nice cup of tea, and I get to ask the head of MI6 a few personal questions, and put two and two together. He feels guilty over his sister’s death, because he had something to do with it. A little bit of truth helps to sell a big lie.”

“Mycroft doesn’t feel guilt over Eurus’s death,” scoffed Sherlock.

Mary gave him a pitying look. “Mycroft’s right about one thing you know,” she said, “You can be a bit self-absorbed.”

*

**The Holmes Cottage, Christmas Day**

John passed the scorched diary, the cutting and the photograph to Mary.

“Magnussen will believe it, you think?”

“Oh yes. The sweaty little toad is eager to get his hands on it.” Mary pursed her lips in distaste. “He’s been angling for a long time to get his claws into MI6. His government puppets can only do so much. Politicians don’t endure the way the civil service does.”

“And he’s expecting the three of us, definitely?”

“We’ve been over this, John.”

John sighed. They had. Mary had made contact with Magnussen again. A hasty story had been concocted to cover for Janine.  Hit by a car, in hospital, cranial injuries. (Well, one faked death had worked so well for them a few years ago. Why give up on a good wheeze when it was already well rehearsed?) Mary had gone to her husband for help with her terrible dilemma. Her loving, protective husband had gone to his best friend for help.

His best friend, Sherlock Holmes, with a grudge against his interfering older brother and a demonstrated weakness for heroine. Magnussen didn’t see Sherlock as a credible threat. More as a wilful, arrogant braggart, easily dismissed or used as required.

“He’ll believe enough to let the three of us in,” Sherlock continued, “Where he fully expects us to make a bad bargain to save Mary, by putting ourselves under his control.”

Not a fantastic prospect, but it’s what they had to work with. Between them, they’d find where Magnussen locked away his horde of destructive secrets, and then let Mycroft’s team do the rest.

John checked his watch. “Time?”

“Time.”

The three of them left the downstairs bedroom and passed through the living room.

Mr and Mrs Holmes were in deep, drugged sleep on the sofa, heads carefully propped up with pillows, covered in blankets. Tucked in. Warm and snug and safe.

Mycroft leaned on the door jamb leading to the kitchen, taking his eyes from his parents to the other three.

Mary picked up her handbag and placed the incriminating evidence inside it. “Nice work on the handwriting, Mycroft,” she said.

In the distance, the distinctive sound of rotor blades became audible. John tensed. He had long associations with that particular sound.

“Thank you. We had one of our best forgers add the entry. He’s naturally being held in protective custody until this mission is over. No sense risking a leak. Oh, stop looking at me like that, Sherlock. It’s just a story.”

“The East Wind,” said Sherlock.

The rotors grew louder.

“If you like. Come along.” Mycroft led the way into the kitchen. “I shan’t be joining Mummy and Daddy in slumberland. Someone needs to keep an eye on them. I measured the doses carefully, but still. The laptop is under the peas.”

Sherlock retrieved the laptop, upon which depended the security of the free world, but not in the way Mrs Holmes thought.

Mycroft took the comfortable seat in the kitchen and sipped his cooling cup of tea.

“Good luck,” he said, “I’ll wait for your signal.”

The sound of the helicopter coming in to land in their meadow grew louder.

John, Mary and Sherlock went out to meet it.

*

Nothing went as planned.

Magnussen welcomed them into Appledore as though he hadn’t a care in the world. As though he found them funny, these three desperate, angry people. Simply the best joke. The most delightful Christmas gift.

He scoffed at the gift of the laptop, even when Sherlock powered it up, logged in, past all the security protocols, left it running on the glass table top in that gleaming white tower overlooking the valley. MI6 exposed to the most dangerous man in the world.

He took the diary, clipping and photograph of Mycroft’s childish confession of murder with much more interest. Inspected and sniffed and smiled.

And then Magnussen left them standing as he said, loud and clear, “Play video.”

Immediately, a video was projected on the white wall above the fireplace. A compilation of various phone recordings made on the night that Moran was taken. YouTube videos of Sherlock Holmes scrabbling in frantic panic through a bonfire, looking to save John Watson, who was already locked below London in a train car timed to explode.

“The drugs thing I never believed for a moment,” said Magnussen, still in that tone. _Look at you. What must it be like inside your funny little brains?_ it seemed to say. “Anyway, you wouldn’t care if it was exposed, would you? But look how you care about John Watson. You think you’re clever, Mr Holmes. But you’re not. You are as vulnerable as the rest, given the right pressure point. You thought to come here, with your damsel in distress and his felonious wife, to rescue them. To free them, in exchange for your brother.” Magnussen took off his glasses. Polished them. Slid them back onto his face. “I suspect you’re planning some kind of double cross. But I wouldn’t, if I were you.”

Magnussen took up a small object from his pocket, and flicked a switch. It hummed with unleashed voltage. It was a taser of some kind, designed to administer a potent but brief shock. He held it to the computer and activated it. The stench of burnt wiring and plastic filled the room.

“I have technology at Appledore that interfered with the GPS locator no doubt inserted in the machine, but that shock has essentially rendered it useless, regardless. Even if MI6 is on its way, even if they search my house, they’ll find nothing. What I have, however, are three traitors who attempted to bargain their freedom with state secrets. I wonder how much Mycroft Holmes will give me if I insist you are simply my guests, and this laptop is not here.”

He rose. “Video off.” The video ceased to play. “Fire on.” Gas fire burst into life in the grate.

Magnussen threw the laptop into it. And then he threw the diary, the clipping and the photo in after it.

He smiled.

“Why are you smiling?” asked Mary, wondering at how easily everything they’d planned had fallen to pieces.

“Because, my dear Mrs Watson, Sherlock Holmes has made one _enormous_ mistake which will destroy the lives of everyone he loves. Would you like to see my vault, where I keep all the souls of the people I own?”

“Show me,” demanded Sherlock.

Magnussen tapped the side of his head. The arm of his glasses.

Sherlock held out his hand in further demand. Amused, Magnussen handed them over. Sherlock inspected the spectacles. Put them on. Frowned.

“They’re just glasses. I thought. Files. Your own proprietary version of Google Glass.”

“No. They’re just glasses. You underestimate me Mr Holmes. You wonder why I burned those things of your brother’s? It’s because I don’t need them. I’ve seen them once. I don’t need the diary to ruin him, you know. Simply the knowledge that it existed. The power to raise doubts. You can see the front pages, can’t you? _MI6 Head’s Dark Childhood. Baby sister’s death: accident or jealous sibling?_ These are the tabloids, Mr Holmes. I don’t need facts, only doubt. I can destroy him with five column inches. Thank you for that. I’ve always wanted my own security service.”

Magnussen retrieved his spectacles, polishing them again and replacing them on his face. His cool, superior smirk had never diminished.

“A mind palace.” Sherlock’s voice shook with the realisation of how badly he’d got it wrong.

“My god,” breathed Mary. “My god. My god.”

“That would be me, now,” said Magnussen, amused as ever. Oily. “Janine has got herself smashed to pieces in a car accident, but to tell the truth, I think she’d outlived her usefulness to me. I’m in the market for a new PA, Mrs Watson, and something tells me you’ll be very good at the job. You know such interesting people, and you know how I like to meet new people.”

The plan was in tatters. Now there’d be no retrieving the compromising documents. There weren’t any. Only compromising secrets that could be woven into fuller tapestries with lies, and published in the daily papers to shatter lives. Mycroft had set this up solely to access the documents and rob Magnussen of his power. Sherlock, convinced that computer files existed somewhere, was to use the MI6 laptop to break Magnussen’s home security and burn out every server connected to it. The expectation was that the three of them would, by distracting Magnussen, using their combined skills, find the vault. Only there was no vault. There were only ideas. And you couldn’t kill an idea. Once it was in print, there was no escaping it.

“I’d like to meet your sister, Harry, for example,” smiled Magnussen, “The budding arsonist. And your landlady was perhaps a little more involved in her husband’s drug cartel than she admits to. Certainly, if I put that in the papers it will be hard to disprove.”

John’s hands were curled into fists, but there was no target where they could be usefully employed.  

“Janine did tell me one or two other tasty secrets before her happy accident,” Magnussen added. “Did you know, Doctor Watson,” he said, sly and pleased, “That your wife and your best friend are in love with each other? Can’t you tell?”

And he polished his glasses, smiling, while in his sterile living room, the people he thought of as the mundane army doctor, his criminal wife and his sociopathic best friend all stared at each other in various states of bewildered alarm.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> At Appledore, Magnussen has just dropped a truth bomb - John Watson's wife and best friend are in fact in love with each other. But is it really such a revelation? Magnussen may, for once in his life, have underestimated the people he's trying to destroy.

**Baker Street, December 18 th**

Ever-practical John pulled the conversation away from the history of the Holmes family’s clashes to the problem at hand, very much focused on the solution to rather than cause of the mess they were in.

“So, Mary, Magnussen thinks you’re aiding and abetting a thief, and you plan to let him think Mycroft killed his sister when they were kids. What happens now?”

“Now we rethink,” said Sherlock. “Unless my involvement and subsequent shooting was part of the grand plan.”

“Of course it wasn’t in the grand plan,” grimaced Mary, “You weren’t supposed to be part of the equation. But yes, we’re rethinking. We didn’t plan for Janine to be out of the picture so soon, or for you to be in it at all. I think we can work you in. Some kind of support for the story about Eurus, though your motivation is…”

“Stop.”

Mary fell silent at John’s sharp command.

“It makes more sense that I’d participate, to protect my wife,” said John.

“My involvement will be seen largely as ego,” Sherlock added, “My intention to _defeat_ him. My recent… _binge_ was meant to deflect in part from how seriously Magnussen took me as a threat.” He tried not to flinch under the double-glare he received. “He seeks the slightest vulnerability, of course, and since he believes he has Mary, and through Mary, Mycroft, under his control, I expect he’ll continue to underestimate me. I can present as having discovered Mary’s predicament and so, along with representing Lady Smallwood, am acting on behalf of her too. Naturally, I would have an interest in protecting John Watson’s wife, and therefore John.”

“You make me sound like a damsel in distress,” said Mary, patently amused by the idea.

John measured Sherlock with a silent look. A glance to Mary. “The slightest vulnerability, you said. That would be… any secret.”

“Well, obviously.”

“Magnussen talked about Harry when he was here. The fire…”

“He collects everything he can to use against his enemies, to gain advantage over any and all who cross his path. He’s a creeping decay. Infecting everything, looking for any point to exploit it to his own benefit.”

John’s silent thoughtfulness began to signal faint alarm in his companions. At last he said, “We can only do this if we don’t have any secrets from each other.”

“I swear, John…” Mary began.

“Not you,” John said, meeting her gaze, and as Sherlock began to move, “Not you either. I. Um. Okay. I don’t think I’ve ever made it clear to you. I’ve made some assumptions. About.” His eyes met Sherlock’s. “Us. And it’s finally occurring to me that I assume you know about… how I feel. And if he knows or surmises and you don’t know, it’ll be… a potential weapon. And it shouldn’t be that. Right.” He took a breath to steel himself.

“The thing is,” he continued, chin up, gaze steady. To Sherlock, John expression was almost certain but unsure enough to need his courage. “Sherlock. After what you’ve just said about my… _need to know_. I think. I think it’s fairly clear how you feel about me. And the night of the stag do, I thought we finally understood each other. That. You love me, but what we have is all you want from our friendship.”

“John, there’s no need…”

“There is, though. Because if we’re not clear on where we stand with each other, the three of us, then he’s got a way in, hasn’t he? Ella said I had to be unequivocal. I’d appreciate the same from you. So. Mary knows this. I told her on the night of the stag do.”

“Big night,” Sherlock said warily.

“It was.” John took a breath. “So. To be unequivocal. Sherlock. I am in love with Mary. And I am in love with you.”

Wide eyed silence.

“Sherlock?”

“You…”

“I’m in love with you.”

Simultaneously.

“…love me?”

Sherlock darted an alarmed glance at Mary, who was watching John with a smile that might have been sad or proud or both.

“You’re in love with me?” Sherlock repeated.

“Yes,” said John, firmly, so that it could not be misunderstood. “And it doesn’t have to change anything. I don’t know… if you love me like that. I. I understand that I matter a great deal to you, but… that conversation on the stairs. Gay _ish_.”

“Ah.”

“I understand you don’t want whatever this is between us to be a sexual relationship. That’s okay. It’s fine. It’s all fine. We are whatever we are, and it doesn’t have to be more, or different, or…” John blew out a puff of breath. “I don’t mean to put you on the spot. With. How you feel. But. Magnussen. I think you should know. No secrets, no lies, no more.”

Sherlock tilted his head to one side, considering John. “Unequivocal, you said.”

“Yes. Which leads me to the other thing.”

“The _other_ thing?”

“You and Mary.”

Sherlock began to be truly alarmed. “Me and Mary? What about me and Mary. There’s nothing about me and Mary. Mary?”

Mary put her feet on the floor. Sat straight. Took John’s hand and looked at Sherlock.

“He means that I told him I love you, Sherlock. _In_ love, that is.”

“You. No.”

“You can't be a handler like I was, you can't be that involved in someone’s survival, without feeling things. Without feeling them deeply. And it doesn't always feel so different, loving and being in love. I thought it was only the Florence Nightingale Syndrome, as Mycroft insisted. I met John, and I wasn’t supposed to but I fell in love with him anyway. And then I met you, in person, and you were… more real than I could have imagined. What I felt for you was more real than I knew what to do with. And I loved John. _Love_ John. So.”

Sherlock had no intention of making a reply.

“You love her too,” said John for him. Sherlock began to deny it, but John continued. “What did I tell you about telling me lies, Sherlock?”

“John. No. I mean. It’s…”

“You said it at Leinster gardens. I heard you tell Mary you loved her.”

“I loved _Agra_ ,” Sherlock said harshly, “Agra saved my life, Very possibly my sanity. I trusted her absolutely.”

 “It’s okay,” said John softly. “I don’t… mind.”

Sherlock stared at him. “Other men would.”

“I’m other men now, am I?”

More staring. “Only superficially. Nothing like them at all, in point of fact.”

That actually made John smile.

“It’s been very inconvenient,” Sherlock said, almost querulous, “Considering.”

“Considering?”

“That I… you know.”

“Unequivocal is what we’re aiming for, Sherlock.”

“Is this a test?”

“It’s an opportunity.”

Sherlock looked at Mary holding John’s hand. John’s free hand was held out to Sherlock, palm up. An invitation. An opportunity.

 _Dare he?_ Or had it already been dared, and won, and all that remained was to say it out loud and make manifest this… obvious thing they had all three been denying for the longest time.

“All right,” said Sherlock, “Yes. I’m in love with you, John. And with you, Mary.”

Seconds passed and the world didn’t end. If anything, it felt surprisingly brighter.

John’s open palm still lay between them. John wriggled his fingers. Sherlock placed his hand in John’s palm. Mary held her free hand out too, and there they were. The three of them. Holding hands.

The world went on turning, and the three of them were smiling, inexplicably shy-happy. Unequivocal.

“I suppose it’s some comfort,” said Sherlock at last, “It’s marginally less profligate to be in love with two people, rather than three.”

Mary laughed and squeezed his hand. “I love how you don’t think you’re always extravagant.”

“Says the woman who fell in love with two drama queens.”

“I’m not a drama queen,” protested John.

“You are,” said Mary and Sherlock in chorus.

John laughed. “Well, aren’t we…?” he began.

“A mess?” suggested Sherlock.

“Lucky,” concluded Mary.

John lifted Mary’s hand and kissed her fingers. “I’ve spent the last three days talking to James Sholto about this. Trust. Love. Loss. Risk. Hope. He was right. You should fight for what matters to you. I’ve been too afraid of what I could lose to be honest with myself about how much I wanted what I could gain.” With the next breath he seemed to settle more comfortably into his skin, a strangely subtle yet obvious transition.

“Would you mind…?” said Sherlock, pensive. “I’ve always wondered…”

“Wh…? Oh.” John’s smile crooked up at one side, reading the slight tilt of Sherlock’s body towards him, reading the path of Sherlock’s gaze to his own mouth. “Me too. Yeah. Please.”

Only Sherlock hissed in sharp pain as he bent towards John and his wounded body protested. John gently pressed Sherlock back into the sofa, leaning forward to do so, and then leaning closer. Sherlock’s head tilted up and their lips met. Pressed softly together. Again. Again. John seemed about to pull slowly away and Sherlock leaned in after him, chasing another kiss.

The world kept on turning, more marvellously than ever. Sherlock and John regarded each other solemnly for just a second before slow smiles became wider smiles became sparks in their eyes and an irrepressible desire to grin forever.

Then Sherlock turned to Mary. “May I?”

Her answer was to kiss him, soft and sweet, just as Sherlock and John had just kissed.

The world kept on gloriously turning, the three of them holding hands and unspeakably delighted.

“Right,” said John at last, “It’s late. You need rest after the strain you’ve put on that injury. Mary and I will sleep in my old room. We’ll plan how to get this bastard in the morning.”

“John, I’m perfectly capable of…”

“We didn’t work so hard to pull you out of Minsk for you to die of preventable internal bleeding in London, sunshine,” Mary told him sternly. Sherlock could see the hint of affectionate humour he’d always heard in Agra’s voice.

“Well, if my Doctor and my handler insist.”

They did. Sherlock found he didn’t mind. He was simultaneously exhausted and uplifted; physically aching from the trauma of the gunshot, but light of heart. He felt like he could slay dragons, and was half embarrassed by the thought, half elated.

He went to his own bed and thought of John and Mary upstairs. Perhaps having sex, perhaps cuddling and talking, perhaps sleeping, and whichever it was, he felt content.

For tonight, they all slept at Baker Street, the three of them an unassailable unit. Tomorrow they would plan how so slay this particular dragon.

*

**Appledore, Christmas Day**

Magnussen polished his glasses, smug in the quiet aftermath of his truth bomb, waiting for his enemies to unravel before his eyes.

Dr Watson cocked his head. “Is that it?” he asked drily “Is that all you've got?”

For the first time, Magnussen’s complacency was rattled. “You don’t believe me.”

“I don’t doubt it for a minute. I’m an old hand at my life falling to pieces, and this doesn’t even rank in the top ten John Watson Gets Screwed by Life moments. If anything, it’s on the other list.”

“ _Other_ list?”

Watson’s answer was a smile. Confident. Arrogant, even. Dangerous. The alarm Magnussen had initially sensed among the three of them had melted away.

The trap had snapped shut on empty air. Sherlock Holmes, John Watson and Mary Watson were untouched by his best weapon against them.

“It’s like that, is it?” Magnussen asked, recovered, sly again. He had other weapons. “That will make an interesting front page. _Baker Street Love Triangle_ has a nice ring, doesn’t it? Though perhaps the English readership will be more interested in your sister the arsonist, Dr Watson. Or your wife, the uncommon thief. Or your friend, London’s great detective, unaware that his older brother murdered their sister, or even better, aware and covering it up. Oh, you three are a goldmine of headlines.”

At last, they were all three off balance again. Magnussen had the upper hand yet. He drove his advantage home.

“I will destroy every one of you and everyone you’ve ever loved, unless you fulfil all my requests. What is my discretion worth to you?”

Mary Watson had moved close to her husband, as though he could in any way protect her. It was funny, really. Delightfully funny.

“They’re on their way,” said Holmes tersely.

“Who?” Magnussen asked. “Your brother’s security team, looking for that laptop full of secrets burning in my grate? What shall I tell them when they arrive? To arrest you all for treason? They won’t get inside this house without my say-so.”

“You’re a snake,” said Mrs Watson.

Magnussen inspected her like she was a mouse. “Give me your hand, Mrs Watson.”

Crowded close by her husband, pressed against his right side, the _hausfrau_ reluctantly lifted her right hand. Magnussen took it. Pressed a skin-crawling kiss against her skin. With a gloating glance at the doctor and the detective, Magnussen licked her hand, fingertip to wrist, relishing the shudder of her body and the impotent rage in the eyes of the men on either side of her.

“Clair de Lune,” said Magnussen, “Never tastes as good as it smells.”

“We can’t stop you,” said Mrs Watson, repulsed but not drawing away.

“No.”

“You can’t kill an idea,” she said.

“Not once it’s out in the public imagination. We can of course keep this between us, for a certain price.”

Her puff of air was her resignation, he knew. He’d heard that sound so often before. Music to his ears. A victory song, of sorts.

So he wasn’t prepared for the way she twisted her right hand and seized his wrist to hold him in place; or the snub gun that was suddenly in her left. ( _Dr Watson’s gun_ , his mind frantically supplied, _retrieved from the waistband of his jeans as she’d pressed up close to him_. He should have had them searched on arrival.)

The black well of the barrel took up almost all his field of vision, though he could see Watson to one side, Holmes to the other, startled. Beginning to protest. _They didn’t plan this._

Magnussen clung to his cold indifference. He’d been threatened before. Mary Watson wasn’t a natural born killer. He decided how to respond. _Dry_ , he thought. _Disparaging. She will stand down. She hasn’t the necessary hardness to fire._

That was his last thought as Mary Watson pulled the trigger.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mary has shot Magnussen through the head. There are consequences. And there are promises to be kept.

Killing a person was much easier, much harder, and much, much more horrific than Mary had ever been led to believe. As an analyst, she’d seen the aftermath written in matter-of-fact reports, a cost-benefit equation; as a handler, she’d guided her agents to survival and success, necessitating excursions into and out of violence.

She had never been the one to pull the trigger. To feel the kick of the gun. To see and smell and taste the spray of blood, to see a human being become empty.

Even left-handed, Mary could hardly have missed her target at that close range. Magnussen hadn’t even tried to run. He stood there, arrogant, disgusting, smug, with only a faint glimmer of uncertainty in his eyes.  So sure that she would never do it, no matter how tightly she gripped his wrist.

She’d hardly needed to aim as she pulled the trigger, so close was he. She’d fired at the end of the exhale, just as she’d been taught on the firing range, where she’d destroyed nothing more than paper targets.

So neat on the face of it, so appalling after the fact. A small, dark hole in the middle of his forehead. Brain and blood and bone spurting out behind him and all over the wall, into the fireplace (the stink of it burning in the gas fire).

Mary released his wrist like it was burning her. Magnussen tipped backward, straight-spined, splay-limbed, like a tree felled in a single blow.

In the space of a heartbeat, nothing else moved, except for Mary’s gulping for air (god, the stink of it, blood and bone and pieces of scalp burning in the fire).

Then she began to shake. Head to toe, every muscle, every nerve, protesting too late. She dropped the gun. Her knees gave way. She fell, with a feeble whimper of denial at what she’d already done (would do again, in a heartbeat, if she had to).

She didn’t remember falling. Ever after, she only remembered John folding down with her, holding her, rocking her. “Sssh, sssh, it’s all right.”

She wasn’t crying, though. Only shaking. Her whole body an earthquake of revulsion.

She remembered Sherlock by her side too. A hand on her back, rubbing in mute sympathy.

_Gdasnk. Gdansk was his first. He knows. I’m so sorry he knows what this is. I’m sorry. I’m sorry._

“Not your fault.” Sherlock’s voice, soft in her ear, absolution for their past sins that he, too, would do again in a heartbeat. The unspeakable was sometimes so necessary, to save everything you loved.

Sherlock spoke gruffly to someone who had entered the room. “My brother is Mycroft Holmes. Ask him for direction. No you idiot, talk to Mycroft.”

Mary’s hands were curved around her tiny baby belly. Around that flicker of life inside.

_Your mother is a murderer._

She swallowed hard and leaned into John, who held her. She felt a kiss on her forehead. Sherlock’s voice. “Stay down. Stay still.” As though she could do anything else.

Her head bowed, she opened her eyes enough to see the body. A human made meat, sprawled across the floor. Little neat hole in his head. Expression so surprised.

 _A murderer but not a slave_ , she thought, clinging to the only absolution she had. _We’re not slaves, your father and Sherlock and me. That man won’t control us. He won’t control Mycroft. He won’t control our world. We’re free of him_.

“John,” she said, her voice so fragile. “Tell me I did the right thing.” _Please. Please._

“You did the right thing,” he said, rocking her.

She believed that as hard as she could, and didn’t stop shaking.

*

The guards were efficient rather than kind. John and Sherlock stayed with Mary, snapping at the extraction team to _be careful_.

A helicopter flight followed. Mary stared out of the window, grateful for the overwhelming noise that meant she couldn’t hear anything, couldn’t speak. The landscape outside swooped past, filling up her eyes.  If only she could blank out her other senses. (The smell of burned hair, burned skin. The taste in the back of her throat of gunmetal. Why should she taste that? The crawling sensation of Magnussen’s wet tongue along her hand. She kept wiping that hand on her jeans, but the crawling sensation clung.)

A rooftop landing. More efficient guards guided her out of the helicopter. She was more aware now of John, speaking rapidly, reasonably, almost calmly.

“That’s my wife. She’s in shock. I’m a doctor. Let me look after her. She’s pregnant. I need to make sure she’s all right. I need to make sure the baby’s all right. I’m a doctor. I don’t want trouble. I want to look after my wife.”

Sherlock wasn’t there.

The first helicopter took off. A second landed.  Mary caught a glimpse of Sherlock emerging from it. He was not being reasonable or calm. He was tearing furious verbal strips off the guards, who treated him like a walking landmine. _The boss’s troublesome brother._

 _Give ‘em hell, sunshine_ , she thought with a ghost of her old smile. Then she was efficiently shoved through the door, down a shallow set of stairs, into a lift. John at her side.

“Mary. Mary, I need you to look at me. That’s it.”

She reached for his hand. Found that they were handcuffed together. She tangled her fingers with his anyway.

“That’s it, Mary. I’ve got you sweetheart. Hold on.”

She squeezed his fingers hard and felt better.

Ten minutes later, the two of them were ushered into a small, bare room. Not a cell, but only a cut above. John guided her to the cupboard where he poured her a glass of water. He sat her down on the bed and held the glass while she drank. She couldn’t make her own hands still enough to manage the glass.

Mary’s left hand was cuffed to John’s right. Her killing hand. That wasn’t right. But he held that deadly hand and stroked her fingers with his thumb and that made everything all right again.

With his right hand he took her pulse, then brushed a straggle of hair behind her ear, cupped her face. “Does anything hurt?”

“No. I’m fine. Just. Just.” Mary took a shaky breath and didn’t know how to finish the sentence.

“I know.” He kissed her brow. “You’re going to be all right,” he said. “I promise.”

*

John sat by Mary on the bed, their cuffed hands held together on his thigh as he clasped her hand in both of his. She was leaning against him, half asleep.

The mind, John knew, took refuge in sleep when it wasn’t ready yet to assimilate the waking world. He’d slept a lot when he’d first come back to London after his discharge. The weight of everything he’d lost back then dragged his mind and his eyelids shut. In the end, he’d set alarms and forced himself to get up, get dressed, get out and walk, walk, _walk_ the length of London. The temptation to sleep forever got too strong when he couldn’t make himself get out of bed.

It had been the same for a while when Sherlock died.

That first time he’d walked London, he’d bumped into Mike Stamford, who took him to Sherlock. Changed his life.

The second time, he’d bumped into – or rather was found by – Mary. Changed his life. She brought Sherlock home to him, it turned out, and changed it again.

As Mary rested against him, John thought of that damned killer cabbie.

He thought of that night, following the phone signal, finding the College. Running, searching systematically for any sign of Sherlock Holmes or the cab driver he’d left Baker Street with.

He thought of staring through the windows of the college buildings, separated by yards/an abyss, seeing Sherlock as he held something in his fingers, high in the air. Seeing the short man beyond Sherlock, in cloth cap and baggy clothes, who was watching the detective with an expression of anticipation, teetering on arrogant satisfaction.

John had seen that look on people before. On snipers in the British army, just as they took out a Taliban position. _Enemy targeted. Count of three. One, two, gone._

John hadn’t seen a weapon in the cabbie’s hands, but he’d seen a killer on the verge of another kill. John had seen the man who’d lured Sherlock away from Baker Street with Jennifer Wilson’s phone, which only the killer could have held. The stone cold killer who had murdered four people by persuading them to take poison.

And John had seen Sherlock Holmes poised with something in his fingers. A poison pellet, perhaps. 

The cabbie with sniper’s eyes had seemed unarmed, but it also seemed his voice was a weapon, and John had only moments to decide whether that killer was now using it to murder the extraordinary man John had only just met.

Battlefield instincts kicked in, soldier and surgeon both. _Threat unknown but imminent._   A wounding shot from this distance? The killer was half masked by Sherlock’s body.

_One clear shot to head or chest._

_Make a choice._

When you can't cure the infection, cut it out. 

_Sherlock’s taking the pill. I’m out of time._

John had shot the cabbie.

He strode from the room, looking for a way to reach Sherlock quickly, but found he was shaking so hard in reaction he had to lean against a wall to steady his breathing. A men’s room was opposite and in he went, wondering if he’d be sick.

_I just shot an unarmed civilian._

_No. I just shot the serial killer who was making Sherlock Holmes his fifth poisoning victim._

He scrubbed his face. His hands. His hands again. And again. And again. His healer’s hands, his soldier’s hands: unclean, marked with what had been necessary.

He stood soldier-tall and met his reflection in the mirror. Glared in unrelenting judgement of himself.

_The war never leaves you. Everyone comes back changed._

A hard sniff of air to settle his breathing. He flexed his hands. The tremor had gone again.

John Watson made his peace with himself in that moment, and went in search of Sherlock, only to hear the sirens of the police he had himself called to the scene. He went to meet them instead.

He didn’t tell them what he’d done. People who hadn’t been to war didn’t know about the dark you brought back with you.

He’d saved a life, or at least exchanged that of a friend for that of a serial killer, and that would have to do.

*

Mycroft stopped in their cosy little prison briefly.

“That wasn’t in the brief, Agra,” he said to Mary. “The exercise was to draw Magnussen’s teeth and claws, not to shoot him in the head.”

Mary and John Watson both lifted their faces to look at him. Mary was bleak. John looked dangerous.

“Are you going to uncuff us?” John demanded.

“As much as I would like to, certain protocols need to be followed. A high profile foreign citizen has just been shot, and ballistics will show it was the same weapon used in the unsolved shooting of a cab driving serial killer named Jeff Hope, in 2010. Even Scotland Yard couldn’t help but draw conclusions from that, and there were witnesses. Department witnesses, true, and the Met will never see the ballistics. Nevertheless, this will take some time to untangle.”

John’s belligerence faded, retreated behind the military stillness that was his refuge when he needed time to think.  He glanced at Mary, wondering.

“She knows,” said Mycroft. “Agra had access to information that wasn’t in Sherlock’s dossier. Or yours.”

John’s mouth pulled into an unhappy moue, but Mary only held his hand more firmly.

“It’s a shame you’ve made this so complicated,” Mycroft said softly.

“Don’t you _dare_ lecture me about this mission,” Mary snapped. “Magnussen didn’t _have_ hard evidence. All he had was in his _brain_. A mind palace. You didn’t think of that. None of us thought of that. He was going to bring you to heel like a dog, with the threat of tabloid front pages. MI6’s head a child murderer. He was going to destroy you. Me. John. Sherlock. Harry. Mrs Hudson. Everybody. You fucked it all up, Mycroft. You sent me in with the ammunition he needed to destroy us. I did what I had to do. I did the only thing I had left to me to do. You bastard.”

Mycroft had enough grace to look troubled.  “Well. I suppose it’s something that he only thought I was the head of MI6. I don’t imagine there’s a medal in it for you, whatever service you’ve done. I may have to send you away for a while, though. Serbia, perhaps. Not for long.”

“You are not sending my pregnant wife to Serbia.” John’s tone was final.

“I have considerable influence, but I’m not god,” said Mycroft. “There are _consequences_.”

“You are not sending Mary alone to Serbia.”

“Are you volunteering to go with her?”

“Of _course_ I’m going with her, if you’re making her go.”

Mycroft sighed. “I don’t think we have a choice. As I said, I doubt it will be for long. I’ll make the arrangements.” He left.

Mary looked to her husband. “When I resign, I’m going to leave a rotten fish nailed under his desk. When I’ve finished spitting in his eye.”

“Probably more practical than me making him eat his umbrella.”

“Don’t cross it off the list, though.”

“Oh, I won’t.  And I’m sure Sherlock will have a list of his own.”

“Can’t wait to see it.”

They both managed to laugh at the idea of that list, and hugged each other, and wondered where he was, their Sherlock.

*

Sherlock was a floor above them in the safehouse, opening a door on Janine Flynn.

When she saw him, the blood drained from her face.

“Sherlock. Oh my god. My god, I’m so sorry…” she tentatively reached for him, then withdrew her hand. Her whole body seemed to curl in, shame making her small.

“Oh, I dare say I had it coming,” Sherlock said lightly, “And it was an accident. Wasn’t it?”

Janine swallowed a gulping laugh. “Oh you’re a bastard, Sherlock Holmes.”

“So I’m often told.”

Her eyes were full of regret when they met his. “We could have been friends.”

“We are, aren’t we?”

“But I shot you.”

“And I got engaged to you for a case. Shooting me seems a _bit_ harsh, but I imagine we can call it even.”

She laughed again, and he smiled.

“Magnussen’s dead,” he said. “You’re safe. Free to go wherever you like.”

“I was thinking New Zealand might be nice.”

“I wouldn’t know. But best of luck.”

“Thank you.”

“Before you go, I was wondering if you could do something for me.”

“Anything, Sherl.”

“A hairpin, and a rubber band,” he said, holding out his hand.

“What on earth makes you think I have a hairpin? I don’t wear my hair up.”

“Because you were raised a Dublin Byrne, and they like to be prepared – and you can't always have a locksmith set on hand.” 

Janine laughed, pulled her shirt aside and slid two hairpins from her bra strap. “You ask so nicely, you can have two.” While he slid them unobtrusively into his curls, she fetched a rubber band from her bedside table. She plucked a few strands of hair from it, and he slipped it into a pocket. “Whatever you’re up to, good luck.”

“I don’t expect to need it, but thanks.”

Janine kissed him on the cheek. “Goodbye, Sherl. And I really am sorry for shooting you.”

“I know,” he said, kissing her cheek in return. “Stay out of trouble.”

He left rapidly, thoughts elsewhere, and collided with Janine’s door guard. Apologies and fuss followed, “Do you know where I’ll find Mycroft?” And then Sherlock dashed away to see his brother.

*

Mycroft opened the door to leave John and Mary’s room, only to find the guard wasn’t on standby to lock it again. He shut the door and cocked his head at his little brother, leaning against the opposite wall.

“What have you done with my agent?”

“Nothing. I simply made him see the sense in you and I have a quiet moment together.”

“Well, here we are, as quiet a moment as we’re likely to get.”

Sherlock took a deep breath and exhaled slowly.

“If you let them stay,” Sherlock said, “I'll do it.”

 “Do what?”

“Whatever you want.  Anything.”

Mycroft sighed. “I don’t want to send them away, Sherlock, but I don’t have any choice in the matter. My influence isn’t without limits. It must be seen that there are consequences. No more than a few months at the outside.”

“Where?”

Mycroft didn’t answer.

“Serbia,” concluded Sherlock. “A few months in Serbia. If they survive it.”

“They’ll survive,” Mycroft said, “They’re very resourceful.”

In the hallway they were an irresistible force and an immovable object. The immovable object won, and Sherlock sagged.

“Let me say goodbye, at least.”

“I’d rather…”

“After everything we’ve been through, the things I did for you while I was dead. You owe me that.”

Mycroft sighed again. He opened the door and stood to one side while Sherlock entered the room to say his farewells.

He wasted no time, only strode up to them to enfold Mary in a hug. HE reached for John too, drawing him in. Screw whatever Mycroft thought, seeing the three of them embracing like this. If he hadn’t deduced this already he was an idiot.

As long as he hadn’t deduced what came next. As long as Mycroft didn’t hear Sherlock murmur to John and to Mary, _Devil’s Foot_.

John’s hand went into Sherlock’s right pocket and one, two, snap, the handcuffs Sherlock had liberated from Janine’s guard bound Sherlock to John. While simultaneously, Mary, his Agra, one, two, snap, took the cuffs he’d liberated a moment ago from their own guard, and bound herself to him as well.

The result was tangled, chains crossing with those that linked John and Mary.

Mycroft realised what was happening as the two snaps sounded at once.

“What are you playing at, Sherlock?” He was more impatient than alarmed.

“If they leave, I leave.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“I’m not arguing, Mycroft. I am telling you. If they leave, I go with them.”

Sherlock looked at John and Mary, looking up at him.

“You sure?” John asked.

“Don’t be an idiot,” Sherlock said. John grinned. Mary’s eyes sparked fire again for the first time since the shooting.

Mycroft shouted for the idiot guard, who came back at a run and pelted into the room. He grabbed Mary roughly, raising protests from everyone in the Devil’s Foot tangle. Sherlock tried to head butt the guard. He punched Sherlock in the ribs.

Sherlock howled in agony and sagged, held up only by John and Mary’s arms around him.

“He’s wounded, you cretin!” Mary shouted.

Mycroft shoved the guard bodily away. “Sherlock!”

Whey-faced, Sherlock glared at him. “I will. Make your life. Hell.”

“You already make my life hell.” Mycroft was caught between exasperation, rage and concern.

“If. They. Go. I. Go with them. If you send. Them. Away. I’ll follow. I’ll. Find them. I am not. Letting them. Go. Without me.”

“Don’t be a fool. Dr Watson, talk sense to him. He can’t go to Serbia.”

“Fuck you.”

“Dr Watson, this is my _brother_.”

“This is my _family_ ,” growled John back.

“What, and you imagine the three of you will live happily ever after? The doctor and his wife and their odd little plus one?”

John wouldn’t be put off by Mycroft’s sneer. Not with Sherlock leaning against him, Mary too. “I wouldn’t phrase it like that, but that’s roughly the plan.”

“The doctor, the spy, and the detective is three,” said Mary with a thin, angry smile. “Plus the baby. Four.”

Sherlock didn’t even look at Mycroft. With his eyes closed, he leaned trustingly against John and Mary. Blood spotted his shirt.

Mycroft closed the door. They heard the electronic lock buzz shut.

Sherlock stood up straight.

“Never underestimate a good over-exaggeration of an injury.” He swayed a bit.

“Not much exaggerated. Can you get these cuffs off, I need to check your stitches.”

Sherlock pulled a hairpin from his curls and made quick work of releasing the three of them. John made him sit.

Sherlock handed a hairpin and the rubber band to Mary. “Use the rubber as insulation. See if you can trip the lock.”

Mary wrapped the end of the pin in the band and carefully shoved the plastic-coated metal behind the plate of the inner lock. It took some wriggling, but she managed to get the tip into the workings and gave herself a brief shock as she shorted the lock. She tried the handle. The door opened a fraction.

“Are we bolting?” she asked him.

“It was a possibility, but I don’t think I can bolt just yet.” Sherlock hissed as John probed the dressings.

“Not so bad,” John declared, “I’d be happier if I could redo one of the stitches.”

“Is there a point to having given myself a shock to open the door?” Mary asked.

“Proving one, at least.”

“Which is?”

“If he sends the two of you away, he can’t keep me from following.”

Mary sat beside Sherlock on the bed. John sat on the other side. He folded his hand over Sherlock’s.

"I promised I'd look after you both, and the baby," said Sherlock, "I'm sorry I didn't do a better job of it."

"You did a good job, given the circumstances," said John, and he lifted their joined hands to kiss Sherlock's knuckles.

“Don’t let some grunt hit you again if it comes to having to follow us,” said Mary, “Make a blade with your fingers and jab him in the carotid in his throat before he gets the chance.”

“I remember, thank you.” Sherlock smiled at her. She dimpled back and kissed his cheek.

They were left alone for half an hour, without even their former guard to pester them. They sat in companionable silence, holding hands, being together. Being family.

Then Mycroft returned. His only response to the unlocked door was to grimace at Sherlock and say, “Yes, point taken, but it won’t be necessary. I’ve called in a number of favours that I was saving for a rainy day.” He glanced at his watch. “And unbelievably, it’s still Christmas Day. Time to go back home for Christmas dinner. Mummy made me promise. She wasn’t impressed with the drugged tea, and Daddy insists he’s still going to cook the turkey and everything for Boxing Day.”

As they left the safehouse, passing throught he unguarded hall, Mary asked, “What happened to that tit who punched Sherlock?”

“I found I had a security vacancy in the Shetland Isles,” deadpanned Mycroft, “So I gave myself a Christmas present.”

"Lovely. We'll send him a card next Christmas."

Then they were all four of them climbing into a large black sedan, and it was over.

More or less.

 


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Back at the cottage for the remnants of Christmas Day, new family is forged. The senior Holmes offer what comfort they can. Mary offers Mycroft an analysis and some advice. Sherlock shares a bed, and likes it.

Giles Holmes didn't know what precisely had gone wrong on Christmas Day with his boys and their friends, only that something had gone very wrong indeed. When the four of them returned to the house in the early evening he wilfully ignored years of anti-hug strictures and pulled first Mycroft into an embrace, then Sherlock. 

Mycroft, as predicted, submitted patiently. Sherlock, less predictably, wound his arms around his father and hugged back. 

"Not too tightly," begged Sherlock with a breathless hiss. Giles softened his grip but held on, patting his youngest's back instead. When Sherlock patted his father awkwardly in return, Giles thought he might cry. He didn't though. Not much use in that and anyway, his feelings were not happy and not sad but a confusing combination. Mostly he was just so relieved. 

"Tea's brewing," he said, circumventing further emotional discomfort.

"Without Mycroft's extra ingredient," Leandra Holmes's tone was mildly acerbic.

"You needed to be kept out of it." Mycroft’s explanation was curt, though gently given.

"Out of what?"

"Precisely my point. Oh lovely, lemon shortbread. My favourite."

" _My_ favourite," insisted Sherlock.

Giles danced around the pair of them to offer the plate to Mrs Watson first. She was standing by the fire, staring at it with a haunted look.

"Have a biscuit, dear. I made them myself.  I use lemons from our own garden. Sherlock tells me you bake. I'll give you the recipe if you like. They _are_ his favourite. Mycroft’s too."

Mary nodded in a distracted manner.

"Have a cup of tea.  Sit," he suggested kindly. "Everything will be all right. You've all come home in one piece, and tomorrow is a brand new day. We’ll have a jolly Christmas just a little late, the boys will squabble and play carols – I’ve had the piano tuned especially – and I'll give _you_ all the nicest bits of turkey. How will that be, hmm?"

Kindness from someone you barely know can be devastating. Giles certainly wasn't prepared for the suddenness of Mrs Watson's tears: her face scrunched up, and the uncontrollable sobs. He put down the tray and patted her shoulder; and in the next moment she was crying in his arms while Sherlock and John hurried to her.

Mrs Watson pulled out of his embrace in sudden mortification. "Oh my god. I'm so sorry. I'm sorry. I'm just. It's been an awful day.  And you're so kind."

"Not at all dear," he said, with his impossibly kind smile. "You're Sherlock’s friend, so you're our friend. Practically family."

Behind Giles’s back, Mycroft rolled his eyes. Leandra noticed and smacked his arm. Giles didn't notice because Mary Watson hugged him again.  Since nobody seemed to mind, least of all himself, he hugged her a bit longer. Poor girl. Giles tried not to get too emotional, despite the sudden thought  that Eurus might almost have been Mary's age, had she lived. He had the ridiculous yet overwhelming feeling that he wanted to protect this grown woman who had no need of his protection at all. Not with Sherlock and John so set on the task.

As they demonstrated when John took her hand, and Sherlock, after a moment, took her other hand, and the three of them claimed the couch. Giles poured tea. Leandra handed around biscuits, sneaking extras to Mycroft, which he promptly hid under a serviette for later. Mycroft must be upset, Giles noted. His oldest only stockpiled sweets when he was feeling overwrought, though he never showed it. It really had been a very bad day for his boys.

"Oh," Leandra announced suddenly, "one of Mike’s po-faced men brought in a medical bag. Which of you needs patching up? Don't tell me.  Sherlock, you've been careless, haven't you?" She stooped to kiss the top of his head, her hand curled protectively around the back of his neck. "Do be more careful darling," she whispered into his hair. "I really cannot bear it. It is really too appalling to outlive one’s children." She kissed his head more roughly, a measure of the intensity of her feelings.  "If I ever find out who shot my boy I'll be wild." She added, trying for a less fraught tone, before her husband caught her hand in his and drew her close.

Everyone who knew who the culprit was kept wisely silent and drank tea, undrugged but nevertheless serving its purpose as oil poured on troubled waters.

*

After tea had soothed everyone’s fractiousness, the elder Holmeses went to the kitchen to assemble a cold supper. John took Sherlock to the downstairs bathroom and scrubbed his hands before changing Sherlock's dressings.

Sherlock submitted to the attention, a sure sign that he was in enough pain to render protests out of the question. He swallowed the painkillers that John gave him and sat on a chair, watching John’s preparations.

John wasn't happy with the torn stitches, and made good use of the medical supplies brought for his use. He anaesthetised the site and inserted three small, neat stitches before replacing the dressings. Sherlock still watched, solemn, and afterwards scrutinised John scrubbing his hands again before packing the supplies away again.

"What?" Asked John good humouredly as he snapped the bag shut again.

“I don’t like fuss,” Sherlock said.

“I know.”

“But I like it when you do. Or Mary. Sometimes.” Sherlock considered his father’s anxious hug, and for the first time in many years thought that being fussed wasn’t so bad, if it were only sometimes. And it seemed to help calm the fusser. Mummy wasn’t a fusser at all, and even she had fussed tonight.

John was smiling. “I like to fuss a little bit. Only sometimes, though. You’re safe, otherwise.” He leaned over to kiss Sherlock’s brow. Sherlock tilted his head up to catch the kiss on his mouth. John was surprised, but repeated the kiss, pressing his lips to Sherlock’s with soft intent.

“Hello you,” John murmured.

Sherlock kissed John more deeply. Lips parting, the slide of tongue-tips. He’d kissed Janine like this, in his pretend romance, and pretended to like it. He genuinely liked this, though. John’s mouth parting under his. Pressing back. So different to kissing Mary, which he loved too, her mouth soft and sweet. Who knew that pressing mouths together could be so rewarding? Kissing Janine had held no clue to that.

For a week now, he and John and Mary had slowly explored their new dynamic. Sherlock had slept in his own bed, though; John and Mary taking their own rest either upstairs in Baker Street or at their own apartment.

Sherlock might be inclined to think that the week they had spent getting thus acquainted had been the reason that the plotting of Magnusson’s downfall had failed so spectacularly. Except that Mycroft, who was so much smarter, had also failed, and he hadn’t spent the week discovering the pleasures of kisses over tea at breakfast, casual touches each time any of them was close enough to do so.

“You really meant to come with us,” John said at last, the edge of his nose running soft up Sherlock’s cheek, his breath warm on Sherlock’s skin.

“Of course,” Sherlock said, “You’d have done the same.”

“I’m glad you finally get that.”

Sherlock didn’t apologise again for that mistake. He threaded his hands through John’s hair and pulled him into another kiss. John happily responded in kind, there in a cottage bathroom, while beyond the front door the stars all came out in the winter sky.

*

While John took Sherlock into the bathroom to tend to Sherlock’s torn stitches, Mary stood in front of the fireplace, examining those family photos. Little Eurus, forever five years old. Sherlock, that sweet-and-solemn little boy. Mycroft. Plump and happy with his sister. With his brother, quiet. Old beyond his years. Always a little haunted.

At the door, Mary drew her coat on, pulled it close around herself against the cold, and went out to the front gate where she could see the glow of Mycroft’s cigarette in the dark.

“So. Was that a habit you taught Sherlock or tried to stop?”

Mycroft blew a stream of smoke into the air. “He stole a pack from my room when he was fourteen. Not a single lecture since has dissuaded him. I’ve given up on it.” He gave Mary a sidelong look. “Though he hasn’t attempted to steal a single cigarette this weekend. How did you manage that?”

“I told him John and I wouldn’t kiss him if he tasted like an ashtray. He threw out every cigarette in the house in ten minutes flat.”

“You really are doing this then, the three of you?”

“We really are.”

Mycroft took another drag on his cigarette, apparently pleased to let them try without any input from him.

“You have to let it go, you know,” she said.

“The three of you can do what you like,” he said dismissively, “You tend to, whatever I say.”

“I mean Eurus.”

He plucked the cigarette from his mouth and glared at her.

“Don’t give me that,” Mary said, unfazed, “I know what really happened, remember? Two kids playing in their big old house. One runs off when she’s not supposed to and a terrible accident happens. The other one spends a lifetime blaming himself. And when a little brother shows up, the older one tries to make the little one cautious and obedient, with exactly the opposite result.”

“You really do fancy you know what happened, don’t you?”

“Why don’t you tell me, then? Seeing as how your guilt nearly sold all our souls to the devil, with that diary. No forger wrote that last entry. I know your handwriting. All those amendments to the dossiers you put on top and had me burn later? You wrote that entry there yourself when you were seven. Then you tried to burn the book. Then you took it from the fire again.”

Mycroft tossed the cigarette to the path and ground out the ember with his heel. “So you think I really murdered my sister.”

“No. I think when you were seven she died in a horrible accident, and after the immediate shock and grief, you were furious with her. So you expressed your anger like kids do. And then you were sorry again and tried to burn the book.”

“And why would I rescue it from the flames again?”

“Because you were a bit of a martyr, even then, and you decided to keep it to remind yourself that you’d let her down. You thought you’d let your baby sister run off on her own and she died, and that it was your fault. But by then there was a new baby on the way and you decided you’d keep a rod for your own back, to remind you not to make the same mistake with this one. How am I doing? Close enough?”

“You fancy yourself quite the Holmes expert, don’t you?”

“I do. I’m the best. It’s why you kept me on, despite all the orders I disobeyed. Nobody knows Holmeses like I do. That’s why I know you think Eurus’s death was your fault.”

“It _was_ my fault,” he said impatiently. “She wanted to learn about the constellations, but it was the middle of the day. I told her we couldn’t see the stars until night time, unless of course we looked from some place very deep and dark. I didn’t suggest the well, but she was so bright. Incandescent. I went to fetch a star atlas so we could study before night fell, but when I came back she was gone. She didn’t wait like I told her to. She ran off to the well, fell in, broke her leg, and drowned in one foot of water she couldn’t stand up in. We found her an hour later, but it was too late, of course. Drowning takes so little time.”

Mycroft lit a fresh cigarette. The agitation in his voice was reflected briefly in his shaking hands, but then he blew out a breath and was still again. He was so much better than Sherlock at this: at placing a cap on the volcano.

“Christ, Mycroft. And you used _this_ as bait to get us in to Magnussen?”

Mycroft smiled thinly. “I have otherwise led a blameless life.”

“But you blame yourself for this. Mycroft, you were a _child_.”

“The elder child. The one old enough to know better, as the litany went whenever Eurus and I had an argument. You’re right. Months after the funeral, I was childishly angry with her for being so disobedient and impatient. I decided for a while that it wasn’t an accident. She _chose_ to climb into the well without waiting for me, to spite me. Children are so stupid. Even me. Of _course_ I was sorry…”

“But you were seven and full of rage at her for leaving you.”

Mycroft took another drag on his cigarette and didn’t reply.

“Do you want my analysis?” Mary offered.

“Do I have a choice?”

“I’m one of the best analysts you have. Seems like you should have a second opinion.”

“I’ve already had that. _Not your fault. Only a boy. Rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb._ ”

“You think I’m really going to be that kind?”

He was thoughtful. “Perhaps not. Oh well. Analyse away.” He was clearly not expecting much.

“Every time you try to make Sherlock stay put, you fail. He’s not the staying put type, any more than Eurus was.”

“Thank you, yes, I am aware of my little brother’s personality flaws.”

“Are you aware of your own?”

“Tolerably.”

“You try to make him obey, and he doesn’t, so you try to guide where his footsteps will go. Every time he notices he takes another path, desperate to escape the weight of your fear for him. Your love for him is crushing. Suffocating. And it’ll get him killed.”

Mycroft arched an eyebrow at her.

“You tried to manage the Moriarty affair. Sherlock wouldn’t stay put, stay out of it, so you tried to orchestrate the outcome. Even to the point of actually helping Sherlock pull that appalling stunt on the rooftop: in front of John Watson, the wild card. You wanted to get Sherlock away from him, having concluded that John wasn’t good for him. That wasn’t your first mistake, but it was your most significant.”

“Really?”

“You think you’re the only one who can love Sherlock enough to protect him, and you’ve missed the point.”

“The point being?”

“If it had been John on that rooftop with Moriarty, he'd have jumped in a heartbeat to save Sherlock. I love him madly but though he’s fantastic in an immediate crisis, he doesn’t think enough moves ahead. Sherlock does. Sherlock planned the whole scheme so that he could jump to save John and _still be with him_. He calculates differently when John is part of the equation. He calculates to survive. He calculates so that they will _be together_. The way to help Sherlock isn’t to protect him, or to help him to protect others. It’s to give him a reason to want to live. John gave him that. When I was his handler, it’s what I tried to give back to him. His reason to return.”

Mycroft seemed unmoved. “And my other mistakes?”

“Things needn’t have gone as far as that rooftop, but you couldn’t help yourself. Playing some long game keeping Sherlock interested enough to keep him off the drugs, but safe enough that Moriarty wouldn’t kill him. And you botched it. You weren’t responsible for what happened to Eurus, but Sherlock is another matter.”

Mycroft slow-blinked.

“You led Sherlock straight to the well, Mycroft. You opened it up and pointed the way down, and he took it. And he jumped into the darkness while you were watching. And then you realised what you’d done, so you threw me in after him as a rope to get him out, after he refused to work with the two he knew were in your pocket. I’m a lot of things, Mycroft, and I work for you, but I’m not your creature.”

“As became painfully evident during that year.”

“You keep corralling him, Mycroft, and he keeps trying to escape your control – and that sends him jumping into the nearest metaphorical well. You did it again with Magnussen. And you have to stop. You have to stop herding him there at top speed. I don’t know what John and I can do to keep him safe, if you keep doing that, thinking you’re saving him. You’re not saving him.”

“And you can?”

“He doesn’t need saving, Mycroft, except from the way he tries to escape _you_.”

“I see. Thank you. You comfort me marvellous much.”

“I’m not trying to comfort you, Mycroft. I’m trying to keep you from hurting the man I love. The _men_ I love.”

Mycroft flicked the butt of his second cigarette into the air. He watched it spin and fall, then stood on it.

“Worth a try, I suppose,” he said, “Everything else ends in tears.” He turned to face the front door of the cottage just as it opened. His mother stood silhouetted in the light from inside the warm house.

“Supper’s ready, Mycroft,” she called out. “I’ve got cold rabbit pie for you, and jam roly poly, and I’ve told Sherlock if he touches a bite of either I’m feeding his own pudding to the ducks.”

Mary couldn’t read the expression on Mycroft’s face as he called back, “I’ll be right in, Mummy.” But she could read Mrs Holmes’s all right.

There was a woman who could see her son was suffering, and showered him with the only kind of overt love he knew how to accept.

For just that moment, Mary also felt terribly angry with poor, dead Eurus. _If you had just stayed where you were told, how different would this family be?_

*

Sherlock was stretched out on the narrow single bed in the downstairs bedroom, hands folded over his diaphragm.  His side was itching and his belly was heavy with a solid meal, but he couldn’t sleep. He felt… lonely was a ridiculous term. In this house were his parents, his brother, his… what term should he use for them? _Lovers_ was hardly appropriate. _This is my family_ , John had said. Perhaps that…

A tap on his door was followed by John’s voice, low. “Sherlock, are you awake?”

“Yes.” He sat up as John entered.

“Hey.”

Sherlock’s eyebrows rose.

“So. Mary and I were thinking. We’re in the upstairs spare room.”

“I am aware.”

“King sized bed. Big enough for three.”

That was… alarming.  Or was it? “John, you…”

“I’m not inviting you up for an orgy in your parents’ house, Sherlock.” John was more amused than scandalised, though a little scandalised. “And we know that’s not what you do. We just thought. It’s been a hell of day, and we both thought. You might like to …. Sleep? Stay for a little while, anyway. That it might be. Nice. You don’t have to stay all night. I think… I think Mary would find it comforting. And. Uh. Me. Me too. That it’d be nice.”

Something new. Sherlock rose, put on his dressing gown with only a slight grimace, and he let John help him up the stairs. He didn’t need it, really, but he liked having John’s arm around his waist.

Mary greeted them both with a hug, with a kiss. Sherlock enjoyed this part, he found. Kissing Mary. Then kissing John. Such different sensations from such similar actions, both welcome and both causing that bloom of contentment in his chest.

“Mary needs the outside - she gets up a bit - and you need space,” John nodded at Sherlock’s injured side, “So I guess… ah.. the middle for me.”

John set himself up in the middle of the bed. Mary cuddled in on one side of him. Sherlock, more awkwardly, got into the other side and lay on his back, looking at the dark ceiling. He’d never done this before. Shared a bed. It was odd. It was… pleasant. He didn’t know where to put his hand or how to move, but he liked it anyway. Hearing them breathe. Mary was trying not to giggle. John was trying to shush her.

Sherlock wondered if he should leave, but then John’s fingers closed over his hand and squeezed.

“You good?”

“Quite comfortable, thank you. The mattress is surprisingly supportive of three.”

Mary snorted a laugh. “You sound like Trip Advisor.”

“Could be,” said Sherlock, squeezing John’s hand back. “The Holmes Cottage provides superior bedding for beginner polyamorists. Eight out of ten. Would cohabit again.”

“The hosts provide an excellent cold supper,” added John. “The charming household ducks are very fond of rice pudding, in moderation.”

“I only took a bite of his damned rabbit pie.”

“Your mother’s threats aren’t to be taken lightly.”

“Tomorrow you’re to help me eat all the bacon before he gets any.”

“Sounds like a job for me,” asserted John. “Count me in. Mary can deal with his share of the fried mushrooms.”

“I’ve had a bit of a craving,” she admitted.

They giggled for a while, fell silent, but it was comfortable this time. Cosy.

After a moment, Sherlock said, _apropos_ of nothing, “If you’re thinking of baby names…”

“No, Sherlock,” said John. “Anyway, we might have a girl.”

“Sherlock can be a girl’s name.”

Smiles in the dark.

“Prat. We’re not calling our kid Sherlock.”

“What then?”

“I don’t know. There’s three of us though. We’ll come up with something good.”

_Three of us._

“I’ll start a spreadsheet in the morning.”

“Course you will.” A drowsy mumble.

Sherlock exhaled softly and listened to his … his John, his Mary… breathe slow and safe into sleep.

*

_In the dream, he runs, on hand-and-foot, on paw, through sunlight and shadow both. A bloodhound. A tiger. An apex predator, but he doesn’t hunt now. He runs because he loves to run._

_From moment to moment he is man, beast, chimera, in turns and all at once. At his side runs a wolf-and-man, and overhead is a bird of prey, a kestrel who is also a woman. Fur-fang-feather-wing-paw. In turns and all at once._

_In the dream the three launch from a precipice and **rush in the heart** they fly, and the ground hurtles up to meet them and they land and launch again, so fast, so fast, they run and run and run and it’s beautiful._

Sherlock’s eyes flew open, and he caught himself grinning in the darkness. Beside him, John murmured and shifted slightly. John was still asleep on his back, his hand tucked over Sherlock’s, on the mattress between them. Mary was on her side, cuddled into John, her hand reaching across John so her fingertips rested against John and Sherlock’s loosely joined fingers.

In the distance, Sherlock could hear a car on a lonely road. Closer to home, night birds called in the yard.

Here in this bed, John voiced a low, sleepy grunt and shifted again, turning his face towards Sherlock. Encountering Sherlock’s shoulder, John nudged his nose against the cloth of Sherlock’s pyjamas, sighed, subsided again. Mary shifted too, with a little _hmm_ and her fingertips twitched against his skin.

The prospect of slipping out of bed and tiptoeing to his old room across the hall, or down to the ground floor spare room, was a fleeting thought, easily dismissed.

_The Holmes Cottage provides superior bedding for beginner polyamorists. Eight out of ten. Would cohabit again._

Perhaps next time he’d sleep in the middle.


End file.
